We are 'those' people

It's official. We are definitely those people. You know, those neighbors that you hate to have.
Their dog barks. (In Phoebe's defense, she's barking at our neighbor's dog. I'm sure they're just comparing doggie treats. 'Oh yeah? We get pupperonie!')
That woman drives up and down the street blasting ridiculous music out of her sun roof. Doesn't she know that A. She's white. and B. She is not a 'single lady' so she really should turn it down? And also? This is not the Daytona 500, it is a neighborhood. And yes, you have a spoiler, but that little Altima is not race car, so slow it down.
And some weeks, the trash can lingers on the curb a little too long, if you know what I mean.

OK, nobody has said these things about us, but still. They're probably thinking them.

But truly, the biggest problem is our knack for the do-it-yourself projects. Which turn out really nice. But sometimes take a tiny bit longer than if we had hired a professional.
Exhibit #1. The house paint.

If you remember, we let our builder pick a brick. Any brick. Because we were planning on painting it. And I wanted to paint it immediately, but everything we read said that you had to let the mortar cure and stuff. (OK, fine, I don't know the reason, but Brad was adamant that we could not paint the brick for a couple of months)
So the house looked like this:

Fine. No problem.  Then we tried to find a color that we liked. Enter the paint swatches on the back wall.

It stayed like that for longer than I would like to admit.

And then, we finally started painting. Yeah! But...
We couldn't really reach the top.

And then the weather turned really rainy.

And so our house stayed that way, until Brad bribed me to get up there and finish.

And so I did.

And of course, our lovely six month paint project was mentioned in a good-natured Thank-God-They-Actually-Finished-It sort of way at a neighborhood meeting last night.

So Brad felt the need to point out that it's already happening again.
With the shutters we built on Saturday.

It's a long story that I really don't want to get into, but I will say that  I would have finished, but there was this terrible mix up with the stain color we chose and then I [very wrongly] thought that I could stain two huge shutters with one (already opened) half pint of stain. And then called every Lowe's and Home Depot in the area, as well as Sherwin Williams and a few hardware stores. And can't find this color in a quart. So I'm going to have to but about 5 half pints.

Because our house currently looks like this:

So despite best efforts, we are still those people.