Sunday when we returned home, Mr. Nake-id asked me, "How many of your friends spent the weekend sanding and staining?"

Standing in my office wearing an oversized t-shirt, sawdust embedded in my crow's feet, I ventured, "Not many."

Such are the travails of the weekend ranch wife, who rakes hay by day then sends her man out for Chinese food at night.

The above photo shows our ranch house...before. Before we decided to entomb it in metal. Here's another shot:

I love the glowering clouds in this one.

You can see why we had to do something; not only was the wood disintegrating, our casita also looked like a location candidate for the film Deliverance.

The least expensive but highest maintenance option would have been to stain the entire house. Though I adore stucco, it would get obliterated by the wind and sun and the potential for cracking, our foundation being less than sturdy, was high. I didn't want the house to look like a microwave, but metal siding started looking pretty good.

Inspired by some of the new condos that have gone up in Denver, we wanted to incorporate several textures into our plan so the place didn't look like the temporary outpost of the cooperative extension. For the soffit we used a corrugated, galvanized sheeting, in the gables, a rusting corrugated material hung horizontally, the sides of the house we encased in vertically hung Image II. (More detail and progress shots can be seen over here on the outside chance you haven't seen enough.)

We chose to only use metal on three sides--again to avoid the house-as-appliance look--which meant that the front had to be addressed. So this weekend we sanded the dilapidated cedar on the west side of the house and stained it to roughly match the color of the rusting gables.

As you can see, we didn't "citify" it too much; it's still our little love shack in the valley.