Look here, please, but with caution.

I'm going to slap a bunch of pictures up right now and ask you to please try to breathe as you browse them. They're awful. I hope they inspire within you an understanding as to why, for so long, I've been embarrassed to tell people that this is the house I live in, even though I love it for its interior. And also why I use the phrase, "We're the sixth house on the left, the white-trashy blue one with paint missing," when telling people how to find my house.

Okay, deep breath, folks. Here goes. You should know, though, that this is pretty much how the house looked when we moved in, made only slightly worse when Nate did some pressure washing and scraping to prep the house for painting. He caulked all over, which actually made an improvement to the appearance (believe it or not) - slight as that improvement might have been, I'm clinging to it.

This is the back deck (we will be staining the deck).

This is one of the attic windows (Nate's desk sits behind it).

This is Hazel's room, at least the two West-facing windows. My desk sits in the attic window above her room, and you can see one of the basement windows just below hers. That's the breezeway on the right, through which you can actually spot some green from the front yard.

And this is the South-facing window looking into her room; it looks onto the breezeway which runs between the house and that garage. This picture is of the siding just above her window.

These pictures are of the kitchen windows. This first one is of the bit of window that faces South. The next is of the stretch of windows that faces East. The third picture is of the siding above the South-facing window. Isn't my house lovely?

Here is our front porch. The door will be painted black, and the porch, stairs, and foundation will all be painted a nice, dark accent color. It's going to look simply stunning.

And here is the North-facing side of the house. The window to the left is our front living room, and the window to the right is our family room.

This house could be considered totally chaotic. Some of the slap-togetherness of the exterior drives me crazy, and I'm hoping that fresh paint will disguise some of its strangeness.

Okay, next post will be an update of the painting process, so hold your horses.