It has been over a year since I last posted! After Steve finished the wainscoting and light fixture in the hall :
...We took a bit of a break. We did little things like rearrange furniture and hung a few instruments in the living room (which is now the music room, but its a mess right now so no pics!)
Winter was getting me antsy so we started some little projects. We cleaned up the basement, patched some of the cracks in the floor to prepare for eventually sealing it. Very eventually. But once it was an accessible space the kids wanted to go down there all the time which meant that the wide open stair case was terrifying!
So Steve did this:
With the new railing and balusters making the stairs feel safer, my 3 year old wants to be down there when the rest of us are up stairs. We don't really want to leave the door wide open, especially with a toddler romping around up here so we have started work on making a dutch door. So far we just replaced the ugly old door with a solid panel door:
The old door was so dark I didn't even realize how much of a black hole it felt like. We have to add two more hinges and then make the cut and add a ledge. Then I'll paint it and we'll attach the latch to keep the top and bottom together.
Another project that has been on my list for a while is our front storm door. The one we had wasn't terrible, but it had its problems. It hid the front door, and it was kind of falling off the frame. It didn't latch or lock right and switching between screen and glass was a pain. And it provided no insulation whatsover. It was hardly even a bug barrier. Hmmm maybe it was worse than I thought. This is the only pic I could find. Also pictured is my 2nd cousin Mela, with our dog Sprocket:
I wanted a full glass door with retractable screen and low e glass so I could leave the front door open to get light/air in. We picked one out and we were all ready to pay the hundred something bucks to Home Depot to have it installed. But the guy came to measure it and told us we'd need a custom door (that wasn't even the same model that we wanted) and they'd have to build up the frame and rip out our trim work. We couldn't understand how our door was soooo different. Steve talked to the guy at home depot for a while trying to figure out WHY they thought we needed to pay over $400 extra to get this door installed. Steve remeasured on his own and concluded they were full of BS. We ordered the door and Steve screwed a 1 inch thick piece of wood to the inside of the frame and followed the instructions in the box. There you have it. Our beautiful new storm door.
Next up, we hit the garage doors. They were fine. Not a thing wrong with them. They were even fairly new. But I saw something on pinterest, and since our garage doors face the street and are pretty much the focal point of our house from the curb I figured we'd try to dress it up a bit.
Before shot of the garage:
We moved the window panels up a row and added some decorative hardware to give it a bit of carriage house door feeling:
And there you have it. All of our updates.
On the list for the spring is the front windows (which are all in desperate need of replacement) and I'm really really hoping to paint the exterior. We shall see. Oh yeah, and I started peeling the wallpaper in my bedroom. Who knows when that will be finished. I'm not in any hurry.
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