Whatsoever things are lovely...

Is there something about your home that you hate? Something that you want to look this way, but for now it looks that way?

This is what I imagine my patio to look like someday.

 Like this...

Or this...



 or maybe even like this, with an outdoor fireplace.

I just want it to be simple and preferably made from bricks... a comfortable place to gather with family and friends on summer evenings.

But when I look out the patio door every morning, this is what I behold...

and this... 

and this.

I know...it's ghastly! When we moved here it was all painted over with somekind of slippery paint. A little water and one wrong move...you're on your keester. So I decided to remove said paint. Got out there with our handy dandy pressure washer and started blasting away. I found that there was not one layer of paint. Oh no-why that would be too easy. No, not two layers of paint...no by cracky; our patio had 3 layers of paint covering the cement. And just for giggles...the middle one was pink!!! Yep! I also learned that our pressure washer was no match for this job...a sand blaster, or better yet; a jackhammer is what's needed for this baby!

But since I'm hard headed I tried anyway. After testing every setting on the pressure washer and failing...I resorted to getting on my hands and knees and scraping with a putty knife. This is the progress I've made after 5 years! Today I went out and fired up the ol' pressure washer (and putty knife) again. Got another... well, I'd say conservatively 3 square feet of paint off. It only took me 3 hours. That's one square foot per hour! (I'm good at math.)

We've been planning to get someone in with a jackhammer to remove this mess. Someone young who works cheap and has a good back. But we've been overwhelmed by the work our other projects have taken...and decided to put this one on the back burner for this year. But I've gotta say, I don't know how much longer I can tolerate this eyesore! I've started praying about it. Probably should have done that from the beginning!

In the meantime I'm thinking sidewalk chalk art. You know, like the ones in Mary Poppins. I'll put on a pretty dress with a floppy hat and jump into the picture. Then I'll ride a magical carousel with Jane and Michael as Dick Van Dyke serenades me on bended knee.

Yes, I'm being facetious...everyone know that here in Washington State, the rain would melt my chalk pictures before I was able to hop into them!

Maybe I should just rent a jackhammer and do it myself. How hard could it be? Hmmm, I recall saying something like that about the pressure washer...