Harvest/ Porch "After" Photos Part I

Living in Iowa, even in a city, you'd have to be living under a rock to not notice when the fall harvest begins. Driving outside (and sometimes in) the city limits can become an interesting game of Frogger with combines. Everyone in the heartland seems to be preparing for the winter.

In our household, harvest preparations are underway, too. I brought in the last of the tomatoes before the frost, let (most) of the green ones ripen (--everyone says to wrap them in newspaper, but for the last 2 years, I've just put mine in a deep wooden bowl, and they turn red just fine), and then froze them along with our teensy crop of peppers. I decided that even though I only had 4 ziplocks of frozen vegetables that I'd grown (and technically, tomato is a fruit) I'd go ahead and cross off "Freeze my own vegetables" from the 101 in 1001 list.

We've been trucking away at our house to-do list. But the biggest accomplishment that we made in October is Porch Project. Driving up the house, I can't help but be proud of what we accomplished. Even though the project took longer than we thought, it was much, much less painless than the other refinishing projects we've done since moving into this house three years ago. And, our porch is ready and waiting for Trick-or Treaters this weekend!

Here's what we started with in early October - a slate blue, very chipped porch.



Then we tried a non-toxic chemical and power wash, thinking everything would come up, since it was already chipped.



Not quite. So we began the heat gun process. In the end, it looked good enough to sand. The orange stuff is stainable woodfiller.


Andrew spent a few afternoons sanding tough spots with a hand sander, since we only rented the floor sander for a day. The wood looked beautiful by the time we were ready to stain.


And so began the staining process. I did the edges with a brush, while Andrew used a larger applicator that we'd held on to after completing the interior floors in '09.