Getting it Together

When we moved into our house we had a list of probably 100 things we wanted to do to the house.... But we I was busy wedding planning. Then when the wedding ended I was so excited to start decorating and working on house projects.... 2 months after the wedding, we are just getting started!

Yesterday, Babe hung the clock we received as a wedding present in the living room. He also hung some tin pans on the back of the house to scare away the annoying woodpecker visitor we have {I know, so classy, tin pans hanging on our house - I figure I'll just avoid the back of the house until spring and then remove them}. 

Sunday evening he hung a new exterior light by our door. If you've visited our house at night you know that the motion detector light hanging outside has huge issues and never realizes it should "brighten" unless you hit it. This meant our guests {and us} stumbled up and down the stairs. Finally, we replaced it with a beauty from Home Depot {that is NOT the home depot one pictured below, it's actually pretty}... but the motion sensor is mounted on the top and it's way too high to pick up movement in the driveway since it's already mounted at the top of a flight of stairs. So we're going to try a different option from Home Depot... sadly I love the actual light that has the motion detector, so we may be keeping it and just not using the motion detector option. I promise "after" photos once we have decided on a light.

"Before"

This is the light that came with the house. It is also the *ugly* door that came with it as well. To start: I hate the gold inside the glass. Second the paint is peeling awful {yes I could fix that, but I can't fix the gold in the glass}. Lastly, the keyless entry {I love keyless entry} is from the early 90's and we cannot change the code. And sadly we can't replace the lock because they cut multiple holes in the door to fit this particular lock {believe me, we tried}.

This weekend we went to Home Depot and purchased a new door. We didn't intend to actually purchase one, but we fell in love with a door they had just received that morning and they only had 6 {every home depot received 6 of these doors}. It was one of their "Special Buys" and at $297 we couldn't pass it up {in our door shopping, this seemed like a great price!}. So we went ahead and purchased the door and took it home {to make sure we liked it when it was against the house} and they are coming out this week to measure to make sure it's going to fit {if not, it's back to door shopping again...}. *Crossing my fingers*... What do you think of our new door? We had seriously debates about color {for awhile I wanted a red door} - do you think this matches well with our house? It doesn't *pop* like a red door would, but instead blends well with the wood I think {hopefully giving it a seamless appearance?}. Our double doors on our front porch are painted blah brown, so maybe I can convince Andy to let me paint them with some color...

I had planned on getting the antique black finish inside the glass but the silver/nickel looked great too! Now, if the measuring goes well, we'll just have to pay Home Depot $300 to install it {we really need to find a local "handy man" who we can hire for all of our house projects}. Not to mention the keyless lock I'm obsessed with cost us $130... ouch.

Good news: our housing credit finally came through - I received it in the mail yesterday! That only took 7 months. They DID pay us interest though, thanks IRS!

Next time I'll hopefully have some pictures of the DIY Christmas Wreath I crafted in about 3.5 minutes with $8 of supplies from Michael's...