Okay -- it's definately time to clean up Gigi's room on the back porch!

I've been really agitated at how awful that "dog porch" area looks since Gigi has been making it a horrendous mess! But we've had to wait until she's gotten past messing it up before trying to repair it.  As a puppy she was really BAD, but now that she's just over 2 years old, I think we can FINALLY fix it up.  But here's what it looks like at the moment -- yuk!

As you can see, the floor, the walls, the window sills, the curtains . . .  EVERYTHING
is a muddy mess!  (Hey - we'll get no more puppies, just grown dogs from now on!!)

Here's the door into the master bedroom (and the door into the other part of the porch on the right that you can't  actually see here).  But both doors AND the brick walls are full of mud because Gigi jumped up on everything with her muddy feet.  Yuk!

And here you can see where Gigi has chewed the edges of all the window sills.  Gees!
So we'll need to saw those back so they'll be flat again, and then they can be repainted.

Now last week I tried to clean up that glass door below, but it took so long that I couldn't get the rest of the windows and walls cleaned up myself at the time.  And it doesn't look good yet -- it needs to be sanded and repainted, that's for sure! 

That door was incredibly muddy (I didn't photograph it before I cleaned it though) because Gigi constantly jumped up on it and chewed on it whenever she saw anyone over on the other portion of the porch, and even the glass was covered in mud all over the bottom three rows!

     This photo is AFTER I cleaned this door as much as possible.  So the black on there isn't dirt, they're scratches; and the brown things are visible wood where Gigi ATE the paint and a part of the wood off!   It's amazing how much she managed to chew those wood portions between the various glass windows as a puppy.  Gees!  

     AND, as you can obviously see, Gigi also chewed off that wood along the side of the door there on the right as well.  NOT good!  But if we get that and those chewed door panels sanded flat and get them painted I HOPE they won't be so obvious any longer.

Either Jerry, or Buddy and Lisa, will be helping us with this porch, that's for sure!   We'll need to saw the window sills back to get rid of those edges that Gigi chewed up, and we'll also clean off all that mud and general dirt.  Then once everything is cleaned and sawed and sanded, we'll be painting the walls and window sills!  And I'll be washing and drying all those curtains, as well.  So I HOPE we can get that area to look ALMOST as good as it did "back in the day." 

But look HOW much better it used to look! 

You can view the back pasture and the storage building behind the house out those windows.  That visible door goes into the rest of the back porch, not outdoors.  There are two other doors as well in that room:  the unseen door there on the left side goes into our master bedroom (where the dog crates are currently), while a door behind this photo goes outside into the fenced dog yard keeping them away from the horses (and the horses away from them!) 



Those metal pieces covering the bottom half of the screens were put on some years back so that the Rottweiler we got at that time couldn't break those screens, but we've left them on there ever since.  Just as well, since we've had additional large dogs ever since! 

Note that the glass door in the photo above leads into the rest of the back porch.  Even with that door area closed in, the rest of the porch is an additional 40 or 50 feet long on that other side as well. But we had to put that wall and door there inside the porch to keep the dogs out of the rest of the porch -- and away from the furniture over there.  And even when it was an outside sleeping room when the dogs were also in there, the furniture and tables were all metal - not wood - so the dogs couldn't hurt them in any way.

At night when I went out there in bed, I would close those back curtains,
 but leave the ones at the side toward the barn open!

Note that Joey enjoyed that porch after our Rottweiler and before Gigi arrived.
I left him outside during the day and he would spend the entire day sleeping on that bed!

I often slept out there on that back porch during early spring and
during late fall.  I really enjoyed seeing the barn and horses from there!



Okay, so once we get that room cleaned up, let's hope it looks as good as it used to, huh?  Well - we'll see.