The Summers Family: More Staining

I finished staining the tongue and groove on the front porch at some point but I honestly can't remember when.

Last night I got started on staining the tongue and groove on the patio. And I worked on it some more today. I love being able to spend my time outside, so I didn't really mind this project.

Notice in the above picture the three can lights. Turns out it's a nice little place for wasps to make their hives or nests (whatever they're called). Knowing that we get a lot of wasps, I went around last night and found a few hives/nests that I sprayed with wasp killer. Steve had also told me that they like to hang out in the can lights so I sprayed all up in them. I took the lights down as I went along and hadn't come across anything really scary until the third one. I took off the plastic ring, unscrewed the light bulb, and was taking down the rest of the white cover thing. As I got it off, all of these dead, dried up, crunchy wasps came pouring out. I knew they were dead, but it still freaked me out. I dropped (more like threw) the light and jumped off the ladder as quick as I could. There were tons of them! When they hit the ground, all sorts of their limbs broke off. I was just glad they were dead! Ewww

It took me pretty much all day to finish staining, but here is the finished product. We spray painted the can lights black (Steve's idea) and we like it a lot better than the white against the stained wood.

There was one last little set of timbers in the front that was way too high for the ladders we had at the house, so I caught Steve just before he left work and had him bring home a honkin' ladder so that I could be totally done with the staining. I started this, but Steve actually finished it for me.

The staining is done!!!

We also had some guys come and finish caulking the house today. Our neighbor is a painter and he wanted to do a little trade work with Steve, so he's painting our exterior and Steve is pouring some concrete for him. We were really glad when Dan proposed the trade cause we were not looking forward to painting.

This is a pretty funny story: when I woke up this morning, I heard some men talking outside, so I peeked out my window and there was one skinny guy who had his shirt off and a body covered in tattoos. He had a really deep voice that didn't fit his body. Then there was a bigger guy with like a muscle tee on. He has some tattoos, but nothing compared to the other guy. They were both smoking. I'll be honest here: I was totally judgmental and was a little scared to go and be outside with them all day. But I told myself to just buck up and finish the staining, since that is what I had planned for the day. So I went out and started staining and after a while, they made it to the back, where I was. I feel kinda bad about judging them because it is not my place to judge and they were super nice guys and kind of hilarious to listen to. The one that was covered in tattoos was talking about how he would love to go to the Oquirrh Temple open house and said that was probably the only chance he'd get to go in a temple. He said that he's engaged and that he really wants to get married in the temple, but doesn't know how to quit smoking. About the tattoos, he said that he was just a dumb kid once.... (Oh, by the way, he wasn't telling me all of this, I was just eavesdropping a little bit). But anyway, I thought it was cool that he wants to get married in the temple and I wish him the best of luck to quit smoking!

Here is some of their caulk work.