Instead of working on the kitchen this weekend, we decided to work on the deck. We wanted to get the deck sealed before it gets too cold, and the weather was really nice this weekend. Mike thinks that sealing the deck is better than removing the wallpaper in the kitchen, but I'm not so sure... both jobs are pretty horrible. We finished with the deck cleaner on Saturday, and started to put the toner/sealer on today. We've already used 2 gallons and have a lot more to do! Staining the railings is taking a very long time... We started at the balcony and are working our way down, you can (hopefully) see our progress in this picture:

This evening we installed the slide lock on our kitchen door. We also started putting new window film on the basement windows. The previous owner had various towels and pillow cases tacked to the windows to act as curtains. It didn't do much for the curb appeal. We still wanted light to get into the basement so we decided to try out some frosted window film. So far we've done about 1/2 of the windows and I think they look great! I was impressed with how easy the film is to install, and, even better, it's not very expensive.
Here are the front basement windows, with the towel/pillowcase curtain

and here's the new window film, much better!

We're hoping that the weather will be nice this week so we can try to work on the deck some in the evenings. I really want to get back to working on the kitchen so I'm hoping it will start to go more quickly.