More Work on the House

Once we finished working on the stone (which was around Memorial Day last summer, making our stone project last almost exactly a year), it was time to move on to covering up the hideous blue siding with our nice, new Desert Tan siding.

 

We skipped the front facing wall because we were still figuring out the window situation (were we going to buy new windows???), and so we moved on to the wall going to the porch:


For awhile we had a tan and blue house:


Here's my dad working on the lights on the porch. Originally, we only had one light on the porch, which was kind of dim, and really didn't help you see from the driveway to the front porch. We added two more lights (the fixtures match the ones on the garage), and I really like how nice and bright it is now.


We still sort of have a tan and blue house, but the only wall we have left to do on the front of the house is the bedroom wall (with the windows--WINDOWS will get their own post sometime in the future!). When that wall is done, the house will look good from the street! :) (Only our neighbors on either side will know that the siding isn't done yet.)

Working on the House

 

So, there were some twists and turns in our journey to finish the stone during the summer. First, we had to remove lots of crappy siding from the bottom 3.5' of the house, and replace some of the gross insulation. We also had to replace some of the rotten foundation because it hadn't been very well protected for the previous twenty years. We put up a ledge for the stone for safety (we didn't want to do all this work just to have stone fall off the wall!).


When we turned the corner to start working on the wall going towards the porch, the wall was a bit bowed, which caused more issues.



And then it was finally time to start actually putting stone on the wall...



(With the magic of technology, we'll skip many months ahead to a finished product...)

And there was much rejoicing when the final stone was in place!

Yummy!

Last summer we bought a charcoal grill so that Mark could expand on his meat grilling techniques. We made Persian kebab quite a few times, so that Mark could practice! :) We made all beef and a beef/lamb mix. (We even ground our own lamb with a KitchenAid meat grinder accessory for my mixer.) You can see how nice the kebab is looking with the pretty flames!

 

Since the winter weather has been keeping us more inside, we haven't been grilling, but Mark has lately been trying to perfect his steak cooking. He made some with bacon on top last week that was AWESOME! (Sorry, no photos available at this time--just imagine the 2nd best steak you've ever had and add delicious bacon on top.) Unfortunately, because we're doing it inside, and not chargrilling it, it doesn't quite have the taste that is our favorite, but the steaks are turning out really good (really, the best home-cooked steak I've had so far).