House Projects: The Railing

This was the railing on our back step before.

Ack! Eek! Blech.

Let's see that again from another angle just to underscore how nasty it was.


Now I'll stop with the "before" photos. I don't want to give you nightmares.

Fortunately, this is the railing on the back step after.


Ahh. Sweet white paint. So much nicer.

All it took was an hour or so of sanding, a good scrubbing with a wet soapy rag, a coat of paint over the whole railing, then a bit more paint to touch up a few rough spots.

And, as you'll notice, the utility meter box and pipe on the house got a paint job too.

(By the way, please ignore all the crap on the ground. This side of the patio is tucked away from view so I've made the spot behind the bushes a temporary yard waste pile. Don't hate me for it.)

The reason I painted the railing is because Conservative Boy and I started a list. It's a long list of things we'd like to do around the house. This isn't a dream list, because if that were the case he would have added carpeting and a bar for the basement and I would have just written in all caps across half the page REMODEL THE KITCHEN.

No, it's not that kind of list.

Rather, it's a realistic list. An attainable list. Of things we can actually do around the house ourselves even though we're not all that handy. Of things we can do without spending a lot of cash. In a dream world I'd have the whole list completed by the end of the summer, but since I like to do things like golf and run away to Georgia that's ... um ... not going to happen.

I did, however, make some progress on the list in the past couple of weekends. The frames were step one. The railing project was step two. And I did a few other little things in the backyard as well, but I'm saving those for another post.

You know how I like to keep you hanging.