The railing! The railing! The railing!

The last screw has been applied to all that wood I purchased and Firewood Man used to fashion two porches from one.

[Firewood Man wanted me to note that he is not satisfied with the way the gutter looks against his work and wants to reconfigure it a bit.]

It is interesting to me that the way we had thought the stair handrail would look was to come out straight from the top and then angle downward did not work at all.  However, I like this step-down solution ever so much more.

Taking that first step is like grasping the handles of a walker and then the angle down is most perfect.  Aside from the dirt all over the steps, I am just pleased as punch with the end result.

It took every inch of my will power not to spray off the steps and the porch.  I want so much to clean them.  However, tomorrow's forecast is still showing weather in the upper 50s.  I could prime and paint a solid coat on the porch posts and the porch railing.  But not if I got things wet tonight.

After tomorrow?  We are descending to the depths of arcticness.

The broken light is replaced.  The gutter down spout is back in place.  All of the debris is gone from my garage.  And, as a bonus, the hinge doorstop is properly installed on the screen door to the basement entrance.

Firewood Man was so very happy about my doing all of the returns that he sat down, waded through all the receipts, marked the items to be returned, and loaded everything into my vehicle.  All the returns have been completed.

Much to my frustration, when I went to pick up a second gallon of the outside white paint, I spent another hour and a half waiting whilst two men tried to match the color.  Again.  You see, the woman who spent all that time a couple of weeks ago trying to match the color, since Lowe's codes do not include the name of the color of the paint, failed to put the proper sticker atop my can.  In fact, neither of the two stickers on the paint can lid were the formulas for my paint.  SIGH.

I do now have a single, properly marked sticker on a card that I can keep in my house file.  And, if the weather holds, I will be ready on the morrow for paint.  I am half tempted to put down the blue tape this evening, but I don't want to jinx my chances of having an even more finished back porch.

Yes, in case you are wondering, I showed before and after photos to all the sales folk processing my returns.  Also, in case you are wondering, one of the customer service managers at Lowe's knows both my name and my phone number (to look up orders) because I've been in there so much over the past nearly four years.

And I'm utterly, totally, and completely exhausted from the stress (good and bad) of finally, finally, finally having this endeavor completed.  The airing porch was started September 18th.  The porch wall demolition began September 22nd.  I have been blessed beyond words by the safety and beauty of all that work.  But I have also been struggling with seven and a half weeks of chaos in my normally visually restful world.

Firewood Man.  Well, he almost did not make it through this help.  But who could have known that the porch supports were mostly missing??????  Today did not start well for either of us.  I barely slept wondering if he would come and if this would be completed.  But at the end of the day, it is done and Tim assures me that we are still "good."

He also asked if he could only bring a half load of wood at a time, now that I will be keeping it on a rack.  He does not mind the extra trip, because he does not want me to ever be carting wood from the garage to the back porch.  I was stunned to realize that he had already been planning to stack half the wood in the garage and then have me call him when it needed moving.  Of course, I had not thought about the fact that the rack would only hold half the wood he brings since he brings such a generous amount (far more than a true rank).  I've only been anticipating how lovely it will look in my rack.

So, my plan on the morrow is to wake, tape, fill the screw holes with Drydex, prime, go back to sleep, paint, nap, and then see if I might sneak in a second coat.  If not, I might see if I can rescue the portions of my rock river that have been smashed flat from all the foot traffic atop them.  I would also like to drag the rest of the mulch out to that area and dump them around the porch and one atop the raised bed.

[What does it mean that the garlic that I planted is already growing ... about six inches above the top of the soil???]

If I am too week in the afternoon to be dragging about mulch, I would like to try Firewood Man's suggestion for clearing out the leaves beneath the burning bushes and atop my rock river:  "Use your blower."  You know, I tend to think of the blower as a grass-clippings-on-the-sidewalk blower.  A one dimensional blower.  But Tim said, if I wanted, I could even blow clear a light snowfall, as well as leaves.

Three dimensions.
Mind-blowing.
Pun intended.