French Doors. Finally.

So a long time ago... like back in June maybe? I mentioned we replaced our sliding door with a french door and failed to ever show it. Well that's because it took me this long to frame this sucker out with some new trim.

But finally I stopped messing around and got it done!

Here is the before... Very ORANGE

And here it is now. 

Not a huge update... but I prefer the french door over a sliding door any day. 

I like the character french doors bring into a space. I am hoping to redo that pantry door sometime in the next month or so. I have a few ideas spinning around in my head. But I am not liking the tan chalkboard paint. Sometimes... things just sound better in our head.

And we are missing 2 chairs if you notice from the first photo to the 2nd. Well... my son has now decided that those chairs belong at our sofa table. Which he believes was built to house all of his toys. So I was just lazy and didn't move them back to take this photo. I pick my battles. That is not one of them I participate in. :)

Rolling right along finally finishing up things I have been putting off. Hopefully this pattern continues. I have a few things around the house I have been putting off.

Do projects get away from you? Do you get bored ... quit... and start again months later? What project are you trying to finish before Spring gets here?

Updating Frames with Paint and Plywood.

I had plywood photo frames in my living room that I made a while back. You can see the original post Here

I gave them a quick update with paint

I really love the black and white modern stripes tied in with the rustic frame.
I love how adding a cheap square piece of painted plywood around the frame makes a huge impact on that wall.  and it is always cheap and easy to switch out when I get bored with the design:)

Don't mind the random sailboat on the floor. Maddux's superheroes were using to escape Dr Doom :)

Staircase - Round 3

So, we Jerry spent a few hours getting those pesky staples out. Which rumor has it... is a real pain. While Jerry did that I added 3 coats of poly to each step... which was probably equally delightful.

... Fine. Okay. My job was easier. But it smelled worse.

SO we got all the stairs staple free. The new treads nice and shiny.

and then... we had to cut off the existing overhang on the stairs... which I did not know until i finally youtubed how to put on these treads.

So after that .. we cut 1/4 inch thick MDF board for the risers... primed and painted them... then used some construction grade adhesive to put them on. and a couple of nails to keep them where they needed to be while the adhesive dried.

and finally...
finally.. it started coming along.

Sorry for the blurry photos... during the week by the time I get home all natural sunlight is pretty much gone.. so bear with me.

but now we have some gaps... nothing is ever easy.

Meanwhile I will be painting... filling in nail holes and touching up the stairs as needed.
trying to figure out what to do about those gaps. I might be able to caulk them. That is what I am hoping... however, a few of the gaps are pretty big. Maybe I'll snoop around in the moulding section of Lowes this week too. Or maybe I will take a break from these stairs and ignore it for a while. That is what I am leaning towards... :)

And I still have to finish up some sections of that darn railing... that I will not ignore. 
Off to paint! have to finish up those rails and get some of that dust off of there. I should have it painted and finished by next week... Thank Goodness!

Shades of grey...

I think I have officially decided to wait until next year and stain the entire deck all at once.... mainly because I am lazy. I have a never ending to do list and staining the deck is not ranking very high right now. So I might as well not even add it..

But, I did get around to painting the doors. so they are no longer that crazy yellowish trim color as they were seen here 

I still want to paint them bright yellow. However, I had leftover grey paint from the front door. so for this year I decided to take the easy route and use what I have. 

Its not a crazy noticeable difference in the photos. In person though... it looks so much better.

Now back to painting stair railings and building libraries.
What was I thinking trying to do both these projects at once???

Small Updates- Exterior Trim

I always hated that the door trim blended in with our house... (you can see below where i tested the new trim paint...)

Plus it was peeling and in pretty rough shape.

So I googled and googled because I could not figure out what color to paint the trim since our house is an off white... I thought white trim would look off. But I didn't want it to blend in with the siding again. so it was hard. So I found some color combos on BHG that had blue, Off white, and a color called wood smoke.

So I went to Home Depot and grabbed a quart of exterior paint in wood smoke.

So after 13 bucks... and about 45 minutes of work, my door now looks like this...

Not too bad for round 1 of finally getting to the front of my house (I am running a little behind.... this crazy weather set me back... BIG TIME)

Next is some porch planters, new exterior lights, and I am thinking of a door knocker rather than a wreath (we don't have a wreath in this photo... but there is a hook for one. haha). Not sold on that yet. Still debating. We will have to see.

But round 2 will still be a few weeks away. so hopefully by mid July I will have some new porch planters up there.

And because he thought it would be funny to keep opening the door and smiling while I was taking the photos... he deserves to be up here :)