Shut The Front Door

Just as a refresher, here's where the entry way started :

And here's where it was after my quick makeover of it a year and a half ago :

Which wasn't bad, it just wasn't great either.  And it left us with zero privacy, which was no beuno.

The rest of the 'door story' isn't so quick, but I'll try to summarize so my post isn't a buzillion miles long! (Note...I fail miserably at this...if you just want to see pics, scroll on down!)

We saw Home Depot had a 15% off special order doors, which we knew we'd have to have because of our size, so we went into check it out...months ago.  Like back in January.  We found a door we liked that was marked down to $875 for the double doors, which was an amazingly great price, so we went to the door sales guy to place the order.

And the bill came up to something close to 2k.  Umm...no, I want the $875 doors please.  Apparently the door prices were mis-marked, but he did go through door company after door company, and threw in promo after promo to get us down to the $875 price.  We had a 10% off coupon too, and he told us to go up to the service desk to pay for it, and we could use it there.  Apparently they're not allowed to double dip, but if you go up to the service desk to pay, they don't know that there's been promotions applied already to the door, so you can generally get away with using another 10% off coupon.

Sa-weet...cha-ching!  That left our door price down to right around $800 after all of the promos had been taken off and applied, and taxes added back in.

The door was supposed to be in a little over two months ago.  It came late, and it came with all sorts of mistakes.  The hardware wasn't the oil rubbed bronze, the door was flat instead of having an arch paneling, it wasn't double bore holed (holed for two entry way handles), and it opened on the wrong side (we switched the configuration to open on the right side instead of the left).  All of which we didn't realize until we got home with this big huge heavy door and managed to get it in our garage.

I called HD and told them to come get our old door and order us a new one.  For some reason, they were a whole lot more accommodating with me than Chris.

Fast forward two months, and our new door finally comes in.  The guy swears that everything's checked out with it, so Chris goes by and picks it up and brings it home.  After getting THAT one out of our truck, we realized it was missing a piece of weather stripping.  I called and told them that they could bring me by a replacement piece that day because we weren't driving BACK to HD for just weather stripping.  My pregnancy hormones must've been in full gear, because they gladly obliged.

Oh, and they took an extra $107 off the door.  Sa-weet.

Well, now the big conundrum is how the heck we're going to install this massive door.  There's no way I can hold it being 9 months pregnant, and there's no way Chris can do the door install by himself.  So...Chris searched around, found a door installer, and had him all set up and ready to go for the week before last.  Happy happy joy joy dance all around.

And then the guy emails, says it wasn't worth his time, and he wasn't interested in doing the job anymore.  Yeah, he emailed that the night before he was supposed to get here.  Great.

So, Chris called around some more, found a handy-man that charged $25 an hour, and got put on his list.  The problem?  His first available day was June 9th.  My due date is May 30th.  Oiy.

But I've taken the approach on whatever gets done before Kalia gets here, gets done.  Whatever doesn't wasn't meant to be.  June 9th it was.

The guy called this past week and said he had an opening and would we like to be squeezed in.  Yes please!!!  I was on strict request to hold Kalia in until the front door got installed.

Can you even imagine?!  The thought of no front door whatsoever is WAY worse than the thought of a glass front door, but we really wanted that new door installed.  And...we're not the type to be able to just sit around and WAIT for things, so...I stopped doing my labor dance and sat on my rear all day long trying to NOT encourage labor to get here.

Here's Chris beaming at lunch time...after they got the old frame out, and the new one in, and it was all plumb!

As you can see, installing new front doors is way more than just taking off the old ones from the hinges and installing new ones!

Do you see the one causality from ripping out the old door?

Apparently the old shoe kick thingy ma bobber (yes, that's my technical term) was screwed into the concrete under the tile, so when it came out, my piece of tile popped right off.  Sigh...put it on the to-do list.  We really weren't too concerned...we were just excited that our new front door was going in!

And after a loong day (6 hours with the handi-man, 3 extra hours with just Chris), our new front door, with our old hardware, was installed.

Look at how pretty those doors are!!

And here's a VERY happy Chris after the doors are in.  Chris helped the handy-man to speed up the process, which saved us a ton of loot in the long run.  They worked hard...all.day.long!

This past weekend, we worked on getting the doors finished.  On Saturday, I sanded down both doors (Chris doesn't trust himself with a sander and anything expensive just yet), and then we each took a door and stained it.  We waited the recommended 4 hours, and then applied another coat of stain on it.

On Sunday, we applied THREE coats of water based (low VOC for Kalia!) spar urethane, which is supposed to be good for interior and exterior wood finishes (most polyurethanes say interior use only), and sanded with 220 grit sandpaper in between each coat.  Holy.forever.

We really were hoping that I didn't go into labor during all of this too.  If I would've, there would've been boxes blocking the front door instead of hardware because we took all of the hardware back off to do the finishing work.  We had a good chuckle on Sunday night, after the hardware was put back on, about our parents being at the hospital and asking for the keys to our house to go check on Kodi.  We could just see us telling them "oh, no need...just move the boxes and walk right on in.  Hopefully everything is still there!"

This week we fixed the broken tile from out front (it's still not 100% done, we need to re-grout it back in!), painted around the inside frame (the new frame is a little more narrow, so things aren't just a quick and easy replace...booo!), re-installed the trim on the inside, and added in the fill trim to account for the size difference.  We still need to go back and add more caulk around the frames, paint the frames, and maybe give the walls one more coat, but this is good enough for now.  I just wanted the framing at least on the doors in case Kalia decides to show up soon (please oh please!!!).  After all that...here's the result of our hard work!!

We need to find a new runner to put in front of this door too, but for now, we're working with what we've got!

Onto the outside...

On our to-do list is repaint the rest of the house (we did just the back when we were re-doing the pool deck), but that is certainty not something I'm wanting to tackle this weekend, at 39 weeks pregnant!

And here's the full Monty entry-way.

So what do you guys think?!  Do you think we're a little crazy to be doing stuff like this with two weeks left till my due date?!  I keep saying I'm ready, but now I'm REALLY ready!!  I'm so happy with the way these doors came out, and I'm SO THANKFUL for our privacy!!

I might or might not have stopped in front of the door and sang out "I'm in my skivvies, yeah, I'm in my skivvies!!!" while doing some retarded looking form of a dance that's only acceptable for my hubs to see at 38 weeks pregnant.  I could be making that up though.  You wouldn't know, even if you lived in my neighborhood, because you can't see in anymore!!!  Hallelujah!!

Whew...what a long post!!  Congratulations if you made it to the end...

Happy Friday everyone!!  Can you guys do me a favor and please get your 'labor dance' on for me...this Florida heat is getting to be too much, and I'm a-ready for Kalia to get here.

Hope you guys have a great weekend!

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We're Not Normal

I know, shocking, right?

Well...not so much if you know us in for real life...and not so much if you've been reading my blog for any longer than 30 seconds.  It's probably pretty easy to figure out that at least I'm not normal.  And Chris loves me and is going to spend the rest of his life with me, so my non-normalcy has most definitely rubbed off on him too.

Besides, if you ask my Dad, Chris was never normal to start off with.  He's from the panhandle of Florida, and again, according to my Dad, you can't be normal and come from the panhandle.  (Sorry any of you normal peeps out there from the panhandle of Florida...it's my Dad, not me.  Take it up with him!).

This post obviously isn't going to delve into how odd Chris and I are...so I'll get to my point already.  The weekend before last, we worked on Kalia's bathroom, which was not at all on our to-do list.

All I wanted to get accomplished was painting the hallway to Kalia's room so that I could hang her growth chart there that she got from my Tampa baby shower and finally put her door back on.  Well, that and a few other projects that will be popping up here shortly, but re-doing the bathroom was most definitely not on that list.

While I was finishing the dresser a few weekends back, Chris got motivated and primed the baseboards and the exterior door frame to Kalia's room...and then got a little over-ambitious and decided since he was already priming the door frame, he might as well prime the other door frames that led to the hallway.  Side note : I spent a lot of time painting every single baseboard with the exception of three rooms (laundry, office, and in-law suite), but waited to paint the door frames until after we painted the doors.  Well, the doors have been painted for quite some time, and slowly but surely, the frames are getting done.

Hallway to the laundry room - You can see the difference in where Chris has primed and what was there previously.  Yellow, yellow, yellow...yuck!

I was on par with that extra effort.  I mean, since I was already going to have the paint out, I might as well do that hallway too.  No biggie.

Besides the trim, the hallway to Kalia's room needed a fresh coat of paint too, so we decided we'd just go ahead and paint the ceiling in there also while we were at it.  I mean, it's a small hallway...small effort.  Chris starts taping down paper in the hallway and Kalia's bathroom.  He said if he was getting out a roller to paint the ceiling in the hallway, he might as well go ahead and paint the ceiling in the bathroom too.

Okay, I'm still on par...makes sense.  I'm a big believer in painting from the top of the room to the bottom, but since I can't stand on a ladder anymore, painting the ceiling wasn't going to be my task.  I painted the walls, leaving the top of the walls for Chris to do, and then after that painted the baseboards and door frames.

While I'm making my way down the 2nd hallway with the trim, I hear a series of loud bangs then "Kaaaraa...could you please open the front door NOW?!?!"  Oh great.  I haul booty as fast as mine will go these days to the front door with Chris waddling behind me holding our old toilet.  Whaaa?

Me : "Wait, I thought you were just painting the ceiling in there.  Why is our toilet in the front yard?!"
Chris : "Well, I am painting the ceiling.  But since I'm painting the ceiling, we might as well paint the wall, and then since you already have the trim paint out, we might as well trim out the bathroom too while we're at it.  I'll paint the ceiling, you paint the wall and trim, and then we'll install a new toilet."
Me : "Kalia's door isn't getting put on this weekend is it?"
Chris : "Go big or go home!!!"

Funny...I thought I was home!!!

I went back to painting the trim in the hallway, and next thing I hear is "Kara...I need your help for a second!!!"

Oiy...I went in and helped Chris pull off the old shower doors.

And then I go in there to look at the bathroom and Chris starts eyeballing the vanity.

Me : "Don't even think about it."
Chris : "But it's so ugly...

And that's how the whole faux granite / painted vanity came to be.  Do normal people go to paint a small hallway and wind up redoing an entire bathroom?!  I mean, I know I'm nesting...what's Chris's excuse?

I spose Daddy's nest too.  Really, this is just about how we did every project in our old house.  Within a few weeks of moving into this house though, Chris started going back for his Master's in EE full time while working full time, so I was the solo crazy one on home improvement projects until we got back from Hawaii.  Now I'm slowing down, and Chris is back on track with our psycho speed!

But...we did get all of the stuff on my to-do list done...finally!

We finished up the laundry room hallway that weekend.

Painted trim, hallway, and spray painted vent white.  Such small changes, but man do we notice a difference!

This past weekend we hung up Kalia's growth chart on her freshly painted hallway:

Painted ceiling, trim, hallway

Growth chart that we can take with us wherever!  She'll...uh...take awhile to 'grow' into it, but if we don't hang it now, it'll get lost!  This is probably the most 'baby' thing I've done for her arrival, but it's so darn cute!

And installed her door again.

We added a wall protector on the back of her door knob too...I'm sure there will be times when that door flies open!!  To see more of Kalia's alphabet wall, go here.  To see more about those pillows, go here.

It's funny how the finishing touches...the little things...can make me so happy!  Any fellow 'not normal' people out there?!  I'm positive we're not the only ones!!

Hope everyone's having a great week so far!  Happy Wednesday!

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Finished Doors : Re-Vamping Old Door Hardware

This post has been awhile in the making...

A few weeks ago, I wrote about my step-dad coming over and painting our doors.  When we took all of the doors off, we removed all of the hinges and door knobs too.  We wanted to refinish them with the oil rubbed bronze finish that I've used for both my Key Art and my Sewing Cabinet Makeover.  The shiny gold had to go.

After we took of ALL of the doors, ALL of the hinges, and ALL of the door handles, we scrubbed and sanded down each one.

Step 1 - Scrub and Sand

Okay, so maybe Chris scrubbed and sanded.  Details, smetails.

We have 11 interior doors and 3 pocket doors, which leads to a buzillion pieces of gold shiny hardware.

I actually attempted to do our bathroom door with the hardware still on it awhile back.  That's why you see a few pieces that are already oil rubbed bronze.  The good news was it was really hard to get it off with both scrubbing and sanding, so that made us feel great!

After we wiped down all of the sanded hardware, we spread them out into groups, and sprayed on the primer.  We used RUST-OLEUM's Clean Metal Primer.

Step 2:  Spray Primer onto hardware

 We waited until the handles were dry to touch, and then sprayed on the good stuff...the color!  We used RUST-OLEUM's Metallic all-surface paint in oil rubbed bronze.

Step 3: Spray desired color on hardware.  Step 4:  Spray protective finish over hardware.

After that had dried to the touch, we used RUST-OLEUM's Crystal Clear Enamel for a protective glossy finish.  That's where things got tricky.  It says to spray a light coat , but it really needs to be sprayed on wet (which means a heavy coat).  Otherwise, the top coat leaves a white haze over your hardware (see rainy picture below).

We let everything sit to dry completely for a few days.  We were so excited to FINALLY hang the doors (keep in mind, they were just laying all over the house...leaning on walls is dangerous with an 85 lb bundle of energy running around), and realized that we'd forgotten a minor detail.  Hinges can be seen from both the front and back.  The inside of the hinge goes along the inside of your door frame, and part of the outside of the hinge sticks out when you shut your door.  We had only sprayed one side.  Argh.

So, we went through the process of taking all of the hinges back outside and priming, coloring, and spraying the finish...again.  I left to go for a jog one evening before the color was dry, and asked Chris just to spray a top coat on the hinges in another 10 minutes.

Well, my over-achieving husband decided that he'd surprise me and spray another top coat on ALL of the hardware.  There's a problem with attempting to do anything outside for longer spurts than 10 minutes in the summer evenings here in Florida.  It's called rain.  It can be completely sunny and raining, or completely cloudy and not raining, so you just never know what you're gonna get.

This is what I came home to from my long, wet, run:

Yep, all of them looked like that.  Sigh...time to top coat, heavily, again.

The next afternoon, I took a section outside at a time, sprayed, and brought them back in.

Ah...finally.  There you are sparkly doorknobs!  SO much better!

We managed to get the doors all hung, and most of the doors hardware on before my sister got here last weekend.  We still do have a few doors with just holes in them where the door knobs should be, so hopefully we manage to get that finished up this week / weekend!

It was a pain in the butt project, no lie, but we saved so much $$ in the end.  For just the hinges, it would've cost us $10 a door to replace them.  That's $110 for all of our doors, and the hinges are the cheap part!  It cost us about $6 for the color spray can, $3.50 for the primer, and $3.50 for the clear coat finish.  We used 3 cans of color, 2 cans of finish, and 1 can of primer.

And because I know you're dying to see a good before and after...

Before : Yellow door , gold knob

After:  White door, oil rubbed bronze knob, and not decided on yet vinyl art.

What's that?  You can't see the knob so well?  All right, I'll give you a close up:

If you try this at home, make sure you:

1. Scrub and sand your hardware.
2. Use a primer.
3. Use the color of your choice, made to stick to metal.
4. Put on a heavy coat of sealer.  Be careful to not let it rain on this step!

So what do you guys think?  Do you think all of our hard work was worth it?!  We sure do!!

As always, check out my links tab at the top to see the parties I'm linking up to.  There's so many creative and fun DIY ideas out there!

Doorway to ... my back yard?

This was the sight of my back yard on Saturday:

One of the projects I took on shortly after we moved into this house, and shortly after Chris started school, was painting all of the baseboards. We were so fortunate that this house already had the large baseboards in the ENTIRE house. Our luck ran out there though...the previous owners GLUED all of the baseboards on instead of nailing them, so those bad boys aren't coming off in one piece.

Which means I spent numerous evenings while Chris was watching class or doing homework down on the ground with a bucket of white paint and my paintbrush.  I took the yellowish dirty dingy baseboards (and door trim) and made them white again.

Which was great, minus the fact that our new shiny white baseboards did not look so good up to the old, yellowy doors. Boo.

Lucky for me, my step-dad is a painter and loves me enough to do some work on his r&r time with his spray gun this past weekend while he was over visiting!  He sprayed on Behr's interior / exterior high-gloss ultra white, and the doors look amazing!

We removed every single interior door and closet door in the house and removed every single piece of hardware (hinges, knobs, etc) too.  Stay tuned for another post later this week to see the final product and her glory shiny whiteness in the house.  It makes me smile.