New Little Old House

I like Minnesota’s seasons best when I embrace them and try to live in seasonal rhythms. Our fall has been long and beautiful; I’ve tried to take full advantage of it. I did many miles of hiking (much more than I did all summer), enjoyed one last bonfire with friends, cooked hearty comfort foods, and tried to appreciate the natural beginnings and ends of autumn. Fall also means putting away a lot of things for the season. I cleaned and packed all of my camping gear (though I do plan to try winter camping this year)…

… put away the garden …

… and cleaned up the yard.

But one thing hasn’t gotten done yet: the porch, of course. Our first snowfall came today, oddly late but still too early for me to finish my painting.

I am dead set on finishing this danged porch that I’ve been working on since July or so. If I wait until spring I have to look at my half-done project all winter and by spring acceptance will set in. I’ve got more determination now than I ever will again about this.

So as the first snow blew in this evening (literally inside the porch around our janky crooked old windows), I threw some long underwear under my paintin’ clothes and set out to finish the last coat of trim paint.

With space heaters going and the door to the living room open, the porch eventually got quite warm, definitely enough to let the paint dry properly. We have decided that we’ll leave the heaters out there all winter (they would just be in the garage otherwise). If we turn them on and curl up in a sleeping bag the porch will be a nice place to watch a pretty snowfall.

The painting is finally alllll done! It only took me, oh, two months. My paint job won’t win any awards for perfection by any means, but the porch is such a huge improvement over what it used to be. Tomorrow will be the final day of work. Sam is going to razor all of the paint off the windows (we purposely painted right onto the glass on the upper panes to add just a bit of sealing to the ancient frames) and then we’ll lay the carpet together. After that I definitely need to clean the windows and the metal frames the best I can and then just arrange the furniture. So excited.