It was a One Eyed, One Horned, Flying...

You know the song, and I think it was written for our front door. The thing was a purple monster. An ugly purple monster.

It was seriously one of the worst color purple's I've ever seen, and not in the best of shape either (nicks all over it, paint and dried glue on the windows, etc.) So, we decided to fix that. Initially we wanted to refinish the door to natural wood. So we took it off the hinges and used some chemical stripper to start. It got rid of a lot of the paint and peeled back a few layers of different colors. But the stuff that got left behind was a gooey mess. It would clump in the details of the door and would not scrape off easily.

We decided we needed to resort to the hard way. We sanded, sanded, sanded, scraped, and sanded. Finally we were left with a semi-smooth surface. Since it didn't look like we were going to remove everything, we decided to re-paint the door instead of re-finishing it. We used an oil based primer recommended by our local Sherwin-Williams guy (he was much more helpful on this project than the depot was) and got to work.

A few divots and scrapes required caulking after the priming, so we fixed those and then got to painting.

Yep! Yellow! We wanted something bright and inviting. Since we already had the pineapple doorknocker, we decided to go with a bright yellow to somewhat match. Also, have you tried to look for front door colors? There are like 8 colors you can use. Not very exciting.

We love the final product and think it looks a MILLION times better than it did when we started!

Oh! And a fun fact! The Sherwin-Williams guy told us that yellow paint fades the fastest out of any color. Significantly faster. Who knew? It obviously didn't deter us from going forward and using yellow... but interesting nevertheless.

Flea Market Finds

The flea market. Its one of those things that we love to do on the weekend, especially now that we are homeowners. We talk about it all the time, and are always sharing the things we find and what we end up doing with them. It is a great place for us to get inexpensive items that make our house a little more unique. Not many people have this mirror or this foot rest. I also love how it forces us to be creative. For example, the last time we were there I found some beautiful leaded glass windows I loved. I didn't get them because I had NO idea what I would do with them. But after some internet searches, we got some cool ideas, like making them into end tables. Now when I go back I have some different plans to think about. They might turn into end tables, they might not. But its fun to look around and see how we can make something kind of crappy into something pretty nice.

Last time we went I got this little collection of goodies:

I've been dying to get a globe to put in our living room somewhere. But Jon always insists that the ones I want are too big. When Jon was looking at an antique bottle opener he found, I spotted the little globe. Jon talked to the guy, asked if he would take $5 instead of the $8 asking price, and voila! I finally got what I've been looking for. The vendor even threw in the corkscrew Jon was looking at for free. After a little cleaning, the globe looks great and fits perfectly on our living room shelf.

We have been looking around for some small square mirrors to add to our gallery wall going upstairs. As we were walking out of the flea market, I stopped and pointed out an ugly wood frame square mirror, perfectly sized for what we wanted. Jon asked the guy how much, just out of curiosity. He said $2... for all 3 pieces. We didn't even know there were 3 pieces! He came over and showed us that it was 2 small square mirrors and a matching clock. Done, and done. We were willing to pay $2 for just the one mirror! So, we took them home, got some black spray paint and coated one of them black. Looks totally different, and exactly what we wanted! 

A little vinyl adhesive and a stencil later and we think this guy looks cute on our photo wall.

Jon also snagged a new air keyboard and a piano bench that day. He's been looking for some seating for his organ, but wanted something without arms and possibly some storage. All the benches we found online were way more money then what we got at the flea market (which included another old electric organ with it). When we took the bench home and put it in the room, it ended up matching the organ perfectly. It was a successful day.

Mirror Mirror on the Wall

When we visit the flea market I have a few staples I am always on the hunt for: cut glass, mirrors, and door knobs. Usually when I see a mirror it is outside of the $20 - $30 budget we set for ourselves. But when we went recently I saw a mirror I liked and Jon asked the vendor how much he wanted for it. I couldn't belive my ears when the guy looked at us and said, "Ah, give me $5." SOLD.

Honestly, I was so excited about the price I didn't focus on how much I liked it and where we could put it. I just paid for it and ran. Once we got home I made Jon hold it against pretty much every wall in the house. Eventually I decided it looked best in the foyer, and that I hated that the decorative frame was black.

So, I had Jon spraypaint it. Surprise, surprise.

We went with green because after throwing a few plants in the foyer we realized they compliment the wall color perfectly. At first we tried out a sage green, but both of us ended up strongly disliking the color, especially on the mirror. So we went for a darker green and ended up liking it much better. Overall, successful flea market find!

I'm being etremely helpful...

I Get a Kick Out of You

The foyer is one step closer to being done. We bit the bullet and finished painting the kick boards of the stairs. It was a pain, but has really helped complete the look of the staircase and clean it up some more.

The hardest part about this project was prepping. Taping around all of the bullnoses, spindles, and baseboards was no easy task. In fact, it probably took us about a week to get everything taped off good enough to paint. Granted, part of that time included running out of tape, then not having any sandpaper (oops), but it was still a lengthy job!

Once it was ready (and we had all of our supplies), we went to town. We sanded all the steps, tried to fill in whatever holes we could find, then painted a few coats of glossy white on the kick boards.

Personally, I think the biggest benefit of finally painting the kick boards is that they are much easier to clean. The original paint was so old and worn that it was near impossible to get any marks off. We've had the stairs painted for a few weeks now, and whenever Jon hits them with his dirty sneakers a mark shows up on them I can take a wet towel and wipe it off. Easy peasy.

Come On In

Our foyer is a mecca for small projects. It's been the room that has had many updates and changes, but changes that only we, as homeowners, really notice. When we first bought the house the foyer looked like this:

Since then, the floors have been bleached (to get water stains out), sanded, and poly'd. The ceiling has been painted, the walls painted twice (the first color we decided was too dark). We added a doorbell cover and a new light fixture. We cleaned all the wood and hung some pictures on the wall. And although it’s a room we've done a lot of work to, there is still a lot that needs to be done.

About 8 months ago Jon started sanding the spindles on our staircase. I finally got around to finishing sanding them and then did one coat of paint. That made such a big difference and with that I was determined to get that project done. Three coats later (sanding in-between each one... ugh) the railings looked brand new. Also, since we decided to paint them bright white, it helped show the true color of our walls. We painted the foyer an off-white color (Glidden Clam Shell) to keep it bright since it does not get a lot of sun.

Another small project we did recently in the foyer was change the base board radiator covers. I know, I know, doesn't sound that exciting. But let me tell you... Jon and I were literally jumping up and down after we replaced these. They have been the one thing in the foyer that since the day we bought the house we wanted to change. The original ones were not only rusted and caked with old flaky paint, but were also HUGE. They were 10" tall! (That is 2” taller than the standard size.) This covered up some beautiful old wood work and immediately drew your eye down instead of blending into the room.

As you can see, they were a definite eyesore. So, when we were at Lowe's this weekend, we decided to bite the bullet and replace them. If you’re looking for them at Home Depot or Lowes they are under the plumbing section. They sell two types of set ups, complete and dummy. We went for the dummy ones because we did not need to replace all of the pipes- just the covers. In our mind, ripping off the old ones and screwing in new ones sounded pretty easy. However we did end up hitting a few road blocks. Issue one? Cutting these things is TOUGH. A jig saw works well if you can get the cover firmly secured to a board or bench, but as we went along we found that plain old metal snips worked the best. Jon got quite a hardy hand work out and the edges are very sharp when cut, but since they are covered by the end cap that's not too much of a problem. Issue two? The old base board (specifically the section in front of the stair well) would not come out. We were not moving the pipes, and the bold base board had a 2 1/2 inch deep top and bottom so you could not pull the backing out from where it was (think a C wrapped around the pipe). We ended up having to snip the old base board top off and pull the backing down an out from behind. (A job that was a MAJOR pain in the butt and caused some minor hand injuries.) Needless to say, it took a little longer than we expected to finish this project, but we got it done.

Way better! We still have a lot of small projects to work on in the foyer (one being sanding and painting the kick-boards of the stairs). But since we got these few done we are feeling pretty good about keeping the ball rolling and completing this room soon. Plus, all these small projects are starting to really add up. Check out our foyer now!