We had high expectations for today and they didn't gel. It seemed like every object we touched fought back. Every job took too long. So what did we do?

I started by painting the front door. It was a bad, screaming yellow before. I had to get paint early. Lowe's didn't have the correct base so I had to go to Home Depot. This was the beginning a day-long pattern. This blue is a very nice color. Unfortunately it is going to take 2 coats.

That baby blue outside is going to have to be painted over. Later.

I moved on to painting the high trim in the living room. It took 2 coats as well. I didn't really want to paint it the first time but it was just so bad. Later in the day Steve hung the ceiling fan. By now you can guess that it was not easy. In fact that fan went up and down twice because the first time the attachment to the rafters was not tight enough. There were words spoken.

I painted the rest of the baseboards. Steve changed several light switches. That stuff went well. Then I started painting the inside of the front door. The previous owner had a (probably expensive) electronic dead bolt that was funky looking and didn't work. We decided to take it off so I could paint the whole door. And we decided to replace it with a regular deadbolt. Steve went and got it and installed it. Then we decided that it would be good if all the knobs and locks were keyed the same. Steve took off most of them and Lorna took them to Lowe's for re-keying.

Guess what… you have to have the key that works the lock to re-key a lock. The previous owner left us keys but none (NONE!) of them worked in any door. That meant replacing all the dead bolts and knobs. That sucked away the rest of the afternoon and they aren't all changed out yet. Lorna spent at least two hours just getting the new ones (thank you, Lorna. I would have lost it if I had been doing this job.) The new knobs are better looking.

Chris worked more on the fence. The old chain link is gone now. Chris still has to take out the old posts – or rather the concrete left from the old posts. The guys (Salt and Pepper who remind me of Sanford and Son) who picked up the old chain link fence took the posts (which was not part of our plan) by breaking them off at ground level. That makes getting the concrete out harder.

Below you can see where the buried utilities are marked. This is also where the side fence needs to go. It's going to be a real trick to figure out where to put the fence posts. It was that kind of day.

The dirt area is where the red barn was. It's now a pile on the front yard. There is also that big area with gravel that will need to be scraped off. The plan is to spread topsoil here and plant perenials in the fall.

I ended the day by getting the rest of the shelf liner in the kitchen. We've soaked in the pool, had dinner and now we are watching Armageddon because it's fun to watch Bruce Willis blow things up!