Doors, Doors, Doors.

When we moved into our house all 7 doors (including our shed doors) were brown. Brown house, brown shed, brown doors. I guess the builders get points for matching! 

We bought a new door for our main entrance (which is actually the side of our house) at one point and then found out it would be a fiasco to have it installed (they guy said he would rip out some of our house surrounding the door, then add the wood back… umm no thank you). It was quickly returned and frustrated we just gave up for awhile. Finally, we decided to paint our door. Since we were painting one, I (being matchy-matchy) said we needed to paint them all. 

Let me start with the note that paint chips aren’t always what they seem to be. There is a good reason why people buy samples and paint them on first. The dark “Mountain Pine” I selected to go with our wooden A-Frame house, didn’t turn out so “dark”. After the initial shock of the color being unplanned (we all know I don’t like when things go differently than planned), I realized I liked it! Yes, this was after we called both of our moms to come over and give their opinions… thank goodness we live close to our moms!  

No longer  does our door blend with our house or shed. Now they pop in a beautiful green/blue/gray color! We have 3 of the 7 doors down… our front two sets of double doors remain! The first round of 3 doors took us just a few hours to complete two coats of paint  - it’s actually a pretty quick project! The weather has not been cooperating lately so we are currently waiting for good weather on a Saturday when is Andy is off to complete the project. Hopefully next weekend we can complete the doors, I’ll be excited to have people over for dinner on the deck when the doors are complete.

Other projects on our house list, in no particular order:

·         Mudroom Makeover
·         Replace flooring in bedrooms, office, loft and media room
·         Paint Guest Bath
·         Paint Kitchen Backsplash
·         Paint Backs of Steps
·         Paint Gym
·         Photo Gallery in Hall
·         Photos in all rooms + bathrooms
·         Paint Office
·         Laundry Room Makeover
·         Change all beige outlets to white
·         Replace all floor vents with new prettier vents
·         Stain Picnic Table
·         Stain Mailbox Post
·         Stain Front Deck Boards & Side deck boards again (they get the most wear from the dogs & us)
·         Hire someone to paint the main room & hallway
·         Makeover Media Room

Playing Catch Up...

Looks like the Holidays are going to be keeping me pretty busy - but hopefully I can keep up with the blog a little better. For now, this is going to be the "Catch Up" post... full of random things that I've been doing the last two weeks.

1) Sadly, the new door we bought will not be going up {insert multiple sad faces}. It isn't the right size and we found out there would be A LOT of trim being torn down {inside and outside} to replace our current door.... so now I'm looking into new lock options for our current door & paint colors! I absolutely adore what Priscilla did with paint on her door {I drive by it every day and always admire it}. I'm hoping I can do something great with ours!

2) We made it through our first Holiday with Andy working {sad face}. Andy had to work 7am-7pm on Thanksgiving... but we still made it {together} to his grandparents and my moms house. He luckily had the weekend off {I had to work... the joys of working for a retail store}. 

3)Babe & I got our first Christmas Tree Ever! Neither of us have ever had a tree of our own before AND this is our first one together ~ so it was a very special occasion! And before you see the photos, you must know the backstory on the "pink santa hat"... My mom bought it for me years ago and I always wear it when we go Christmas tree hunting! This year, I forgot and did my hair with a cute little "poof" and decided that Babe would wear the hat instead. Thank goodness he puts up with me :). {I realized after that you totally cannot tell my hair is even done...haha}

Mom's Tree - Jacob, Destiny, Dillon, Me, Parker & Allie

My awesome mom & Dillon in front of Mom's tree.

Love!

Our First Christmas Tree, love how tall it is!

I promise more posts and more photos soon!

xoxo

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...