Operation Home

So, uhhhh, we’re getting a new front door.

I know, I know… but we JUST painted our front door, right??!

Well, allow me to explain…

Ya see, when we moved in we realized right away that the front door was a little… wrong. See this gap above the door??

That sucker took THREE layers of the largest weather stripping I could find to seal it up to where I couldn’t see daylight. Not only was it a huge gap vertically (as you can see in the picture), there was also quite a bit of space horizontally as the door came nowhere near the upper jamb. As I applied the weather-stripping, I got a much more personal look at the door… It was clearly not original. It actually had “Feb 2004” stamped onto the top. The door frame and sidelights were original to the home, but the door had been replaced. And it was the cheapest, most generic front door ever. Plus, instead of replacing the entire doorway as they should’ve (or hiring a pro to install the actual door), someone had haphazardly retro-fitted this cheapo door into the frame. And had done SUPER crummy job of fitting it properly. Hence, the wonkiness.

At the time of the weather-stripping, we simply decided to shrug and move on. We figured we’d just weather-strip it, paint it, and make do until we had it replaced (hopefully) a few years down the line. I mean, we had so many other things to think of first.

Then, came November. Joey went out of town. And I went out front to get the mail. When I came back inside and attempted to close the front door, it wouldn’t shut. Why, you ask?? Well…

The screws had literally FALLEN OUT of the bottom hinge and were just sitting in the holes all crazy-like. Turns out, the wood on the door frame had become all warped and weak, thus, would no longer hold the screws in their current location. So, I carefully removed the screws, shut the door, and hoped for the best.

The next day, my dad came over and not realizing that our door was dying, walked in through the front door. And when he went to close the storm door behind him, well….

The handle broke off in his hand. He sheepishly handed the sad remains to me and stated “Um, you might need this.”. I couldn’t help but laugh. Of COURSE this stuff would happen when Joey was out of town. Of COURSE it would. Luckily, the front door would still close, as would the storm door as there was still a small tab of metal with which to operate the handle.

For a while, we just used the front door as it was. I mean, it was working right?? That third hinge must just be a precaution, right??

WRONG.

One evening while Joey was at work, I came home, grabbed a package off the front porch and went to close the door. But it wouldn’t close. I guess the stress of only having two hinges was just too much for it and the door went completely crooked in the door frame. Try as I might, my meager five foot frame was unable to right the door to its correct position. Since Joey was at work, I called my dad. He came by and re-screwed the door back into the frame. Good as new.

So, at this point, I figured, “Hey! He fixed it! We can make do for a while longer!! YAY!!” So, I happily grabbed my brush and painted the front door.

Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to introduce you to denial at its finest.

This denial was short-lived, however. Shortly after painting the door, it happened again. The door went offline, so to speak. And AGAIN, I couldn’t get it closed.

And that was when Joey stopped listening to me and my ridiculous “We can make do!” claims as they were becoming reminiscent of an “I can stop whenever I want to” type of denial. He put his foot down and stated that he didn’t want to have to worry about the house not being secure when I was alone with Lucas. WE NEED A NEW FRONT DOOR. And I agreed. He was right. Totally right. We needed a front door that closed whenever we wanted it to. Novel idea, right?

So, we got a few estimates. In the end, we went with Home Depot. Their labor was the cheapest and they had a 15% off sale for entry doors at the time. The door we ordered is from a new line by Feather River. In fact, it’s so new that they don’t even have actual pictures of it online.

Here’s a shot of it from the brochure…

We chose a simple, mid-century inspired door with four square windows and full length sidelights (we’re just getting a single door, not a double as shown in the picture). We didn’t have the option for clear glass, so we chose the “hammered” version after visiting a few stores to see the glass in person. I found a DoorWays app via another company called ThermaTru that carries a door almost identical to the one we purchased, so to give you a better idea of what it’ll look like, I did a few mock-ups…

I feel like the style of the door is going to go swimmingly with the funky 70’s vibe that our house has going on. I just.can’t.wait!

The app didn’t give me the option to change the door’s color, so picture the door pictured above in the same Black Bean color I painted our old door (A nice, charcoal grey with green undertones). The new door’ll come unpainted (with white primer) since the company wanted to charge us an additional $1068 for paint (!!!). So, yeah. I’ll be painting it myself. Hopefully, our new door will be installed in about a month’s time (fingers crossed). Until then, I’ll be keeping both the front and storm doors locked, security system on, and instructing all visitors to text me upon arrival so I can let them in the garage. So very, very sad.

So, anyways, that’s the story of our soon-to-be new door! Wish us luck!! 🙂

Have you guys ever been in “replacement denial”?? What was the final straw that changed your mind??

Howdy, guys! How goes it on this lovely Tuesday? Today, I thought I’d share what’s going on in our our teeny pool-bath.

Last we left off, I’d added shelves and accessorized a bit…

As grateful as I am to have a pool bath, I wasn’t exactly feeling it in the state you see above in all it’s purpleness. Don’t get me wrong… purple’s a fine color. It’s just… this particular shade of purple affected my mood. NO JOKE. I felt cranky when I stared at it. It just wasn’t my jam.

Well, now, I’m happy to report that I’ve rid the space of purple and brought it back to a blank slate so that I can get going on the light, bright, and fun pool-bath that I have in mind. I mentioned in this post that I had to repaint this room several times in order to get it right. Ya see, in my mission to paint the room in a light and airy tone, I went a little TOO light. The result was a washed out minty green color. Observe…

I was looking for more of a teal, and somehow, despite the appearance of the color swatch, it just didn’t turn out that way. Plus, it appeared much more yellow than expected due to the lighting in the space. Luckily, since the room is so tiny, it had only taken me a little over an hour to paint it, so I decided to try again. But, this time I vowed to spend zero dollars. Since I have so many partial gallons of paint in the garage from various projects over the years (and really, none of these hold enough paint to do anything significant with them), I decided to mix my own color….

I took my minty green base and and added in navy blue, and several different greys and greens until I came up with this greyish teal…

Again, it looks super green because of the lighting as you can see in this shot of the completed room…

… but honestly, it took me a while to figure out that the lighting was the culprit. I just kept coming back to the space and staring at it. IT.WAS.JUST.SO.GREEN. A completely different color than the paint appeared in any other light. But, I refused to paint it again. Not a third time. No.WAY. Then, I realized that not only did the PAINT appear more yellow than intended, but the bright white DOOR seemed yellow as well. And that’s when the cables connected and I realized that it was the lighting. I opened the fixture and realized that the energy-efficient bulbs were “soft white” which tends to cast a more yellow hue. So, I went online, searched for my bulbs in “cool white” which casts more of a bluish tone, and found this guy…

(from Amazon)

I love this picture. Isn’t it other-worldly?? As if the bulb comes complete with it’s own magic light-beams and “angel’s singing” theme song??? Heehee! Sold by this heavenly depiction, I ordered two and installed them a few days later when they arrived in the mail.

And here’s the room with my new cool bulbs (Note: both shots were taken in “Auto Mode” on my camera)…

HUGE difference, right??!!! Not only is the wall color more blue, the white fixtures, door, and trim now read as the crisp white that they were meant to be. I have to say that this is exactly the color I was seeking for my fun, colorful pool bath! A bright, pretty turquoise. I thought I might even extend pops of this color into the laundry room by painting the vanity or possibly my don’t-own-it-yet-mirror. That simple, easy, and inexpensive light bulb change saved me from a third paint job. I’m SO completely digging the color now. I’ve also decided to not reinstall the white shelves that were in the space before. I’m definitely adding back shelves for storage, but they’ll be a different style. I’ll let ya’ll know when I get around to that project for sure. In the meantime, I’ve been working (slowly) on other parts of the house, namely the dining room, so I’ll update you soon.

Anyways, I hope y’all have a terrific day! Do any of you have any other tips or tricks for maximizing your paint color? Or have y’all ever been in the situation of “paint color regret”? How did you solve it? Did you repaint? Change your decor? Your light bulb?