Over the weekend almost all of my dreams came true.
Painting the front of the house felt like instant gratification. It’s the smallest area of the entire house and has been the quickest and biggest impact project of the One Room Challenge so far. I’m really happy that the homestretch of painting the house was smooth sailing because the next part of our project was just about the most complicated DIY we’ve ever attempted.
We bought our wooden door a couple of weeks ago from The Repurpose Depot in our neighborhood. We sanded it down, stained it, added a peep hole, cut a custom metal wraparound door plate (this step was a challenge in itself without having the proper tools), painted all of the hardware with gold enamel paint, and splurged on a new brass doorknob to bring it all together.
When it came to hanging the door, we quickly realized that the door was just slightly too wide and not quite square. We were able to shave tiny amounts off the width with a hand plane and after a couple failed attempts to hang it straight, we finally got to a place where the door opened and even locked, but we still had to figure out what to do about the gaps on the top and bottom of the door. Without really knowing what we were looking for, we went to the hardware store and spent about 30 minutes looking at all of the weatherstripping options. We ended up using a door bottom on the bottom and top and they perfectly fill the gaps. Our door is hung, sealed and my husband and I definitely needed a stiff drink at the end of the door installation day.
An unexpected project that came up this week was painting the patio doors. We were always planning on painting them, but I was not expecting it to be quite as big of a headache. When I started scrubbing the doors down to prep them, I realized that best thing to do would be to sand off all of the existing paint and start fresh. There were four coats of uneven brushy latex paint that peeled up. It was an annoying step to take, but we painted them with our paint sprayer and now have a very smooth set of patio doors. It was worth the struggle to do this the right way.
Things are looking really good after all of the work we’ve done so far. Except for our yard. Heavy foot traffic combined with some rain storms has made for a pretty awful mud pit. With a lot of rain in the forecast, we needed to take care of this as soon as possible, so we got to work right away and filled all of the low points with mud, graded it to be level, and planted some grass seed. We have our fingers and toes crossed that the seed will take and we can get our yard back soon.
In better news, I have almost completed my little shed makeover! I’ve had so much fun with this project. It all started with adding lights to the exterior of the shed and tidying up the inside, but it’s evolved into a full transformation! I had fun with a lot of creative problem solving here and was able to get the entire project done without buying anything new other than the lanterns on the outside and a few bins to help me organize. Stay tuned for a full post about everything I did to the shed.
What we have left to do:
- Add step up to the house (still waiting for tiles to arrive)
- Add smooth facade to posts in the front
- Finishing touches on my shed
- Styling!
I feel like we are in the home stretch?! But maybe that is just the feeling of relief after getting the door hung. I know there will be a lot of time spent with the details and finishing touches, and I can’t wait to get to that part! Make sure to check back next week to see what we’ve gotten done and also follow along with everyone else participating in the challenge!
