Oh, and GO GATORS!!!

G and I enjoyed this weekend's unseasonably warm weather by doing some outside work on the house. The exterior of our house is a combination of cedar shingles and siding. However, part of the front porch was enclosed at some point, and the enclosers chose not to shingle that portion for whatever reason. Instead, they made it board and batten, using plywood as the "boards." And to make it match the rest of the house, they extended the board and batten across the rest of the front of the house.

A few weeks ago we pulled the board and batten off the front of the house to reveal very dirty shingles painted a different color than the rest of the house. We dubbed this the crack house phase. This weekend, we pulled the battens off the enclosed part and put shingles on top of the boards (plywood).

We used a nail gun to attach the shingles (if we hadn't, we'd be hammering shingles up until sometime next week), and because we're safety-conscious, we wore eye and ear protection. Evidently, working outside and wearing ear plugs makes everyone want to talk to you. Neighbors kept stopping by to see what we were up to. And they didn't just want to know what we were doing. They wanted to talk to us about it for long periods of time. And then they would leave, we would put our ear plugs back in, and they'd come back to add something else.

We're all about friendliness, etc., but all that visiting really takes a toll on productivity. If our neighbors had been even half as interested in our interior work, we'd still be working on room #1.