That sinking feeling

(Apologies, this post was SUPPOSED to go live before our trip to Alabama last week, but the faucet was STILL LEAKING so I couldn't post without finishing my project. Humph.)

So...the kitchen faucet sprang a leak and we decided to remodel the whole room. (I'm using the royal we, in case you were wondering.)

Let me back up. I came home from work a few weeks ago, and went to get a glass of water, and ended up with wet socks. (Never a good feeling, that.) The culprit? The cold water side of the kitchen faucet. Jesse was out with friends, so I was home alone with a potentially major plumbing issue. I did what any self-sufficient adult would do: I panicked and ran to Google. 

This army is run by General Issues.

The first order of business was to turn off the supply lines to the faucet itself, which the internet helpfully noted would be under the sink. Except when I looked, there weren't any valves on the supply lines under the sink. After further investigation, I found the cold water valve on the ceiling in the basement, but the hot water valve was...nowhere. So the next logical step was to turn off the water at the hot water tank. 

Helpful plumbing assistant Sassafras.

Because our house is a carefully-assembled series of "What the hell were they thinking?!" constructions, I was (mostly) not surprised to find out that there IS no hot water cut off valve at the tank. Yep, there were 40 gallons of hot water between me and a replacement gasket. So I did the obvious next step: opened myself a beer and called my mother. 

The consensus was that we needed a plumber. Since the leak was contained (cold water was off, horrible warning taped on sink, Jesse warned via text, etc) it wasn't an emergency situation. The next morning, I called the best plumber Angie's List could recommend, and the scheduler helpfully noted that the first available appointment was October 6th...ten days away. 

Well, it's not like we've been cooking much anyway. I took the appointment, and resolved to make room in the laundry sink for dishes. 


THE SINK

In the meantime, there was an IKEA sink somewhere in transit, slowly making its way to my waiting arms. This sink is the pinnacle of my kitchen remodel hopes. 

The IKEA Domsjo double-bowl. It's huge. It's lovely. I need it.

Our kitchen is expansive. Our sink is currently cast iron and lemon yellow, which is cute, but not really the look I'm going for. 

My decorating technique has always been to figure out what I like, and then to figure out how I can get it. (Or at least recreate it, which is often the tougher task, since I unfortunately have very expensive tastes.)

My Pinterest board is full of kitchens like this:

Source: Pinterest, that beloved timesuck

What do these gorgeous kitchens have that ours does not? Cabinets to the ceiling, and farmhouse sinks. There's a gross soffit above our cabinets, but hey, I can remove that. The issue I was running into, however, was that sinks? Are really really freaking expensive. Like thousands of dollars expensive. So when I found the IKEA Domsjo for $300, I almost died. And then I really did almost die, because it wasn't in stock. 

Turns out, there were some supply issues with the double-bowl Domsjo, and for almost a month, I had it saved in my online shopping cart, biting my nails because it was no longer posted on the website and looked very much like it would be discontinued. The first paycheck I could afford it, I sprang, and my giant sink began lumbering on its two-week journey across the country. (Apparently Boston was only place that had it in stock.)

This story ends happily, though, because I have my fancy sink, and it's now back in stock at my local IKEA, so everyone else can have a fancy sink, too. 


THE REMODEL

When I ordered the sink, I didn't really have a plan, besides "OH GOD IT'S ONE THIRD THE PRICE OF ALL THE OTHER SINKS AND IF IT GETS DISCONTINUED I WILL CRY BUY IT NOW BUY IT NOW!!" (All you advertisers, take note: the scarcity argument actually works.) Then, our faucet broke, and suddenly our sink was due to arrive two days before the plumber. And suddenly it made sense to install a new faucet sink with the new sink. And since the sink was going to be replaced, I could redo the counters like I'd been wanting. And if I was going to redo the counters, I might as well take down the soffits beforehand, so falling drywall wouldn't damage the new surface. 

It's a slippery slope over here at Left of Center, but I managed to convince my project manager (aka Jesse) that it would in fact be worth it.

I started my three-day weekend with the joyous arrival of The Sink. Much crooning ensued.

Seriously, that is the biggest box in the world.

And that box contained the biggest sink in the world. 

IT'S SO PRETTY I'M GONNA DIE. 

Then, the soffit demolition started. 

Safety first!

Being the crazy person I am, I'd researched everything I could find about soffits prior to demo. The internet indicated that almost all soffits were just a simple frame and drywall. 

That is not what I found.

Yep, that's drywall over 1/2 inch plywood, which is covering up...a heating duct. WHO BUILDS SOFFITS OUT OF PLYWOOD? I was not warned about this. 

The best part? The soffit wouldn't even have been necessary if the original builders had put the heating duct eight inches higher. Yep, they sacrified something like 30 square ft of potential cabinet space because they didn't feel like moving the duct. 

I called Incredible Builder Dad. His sage advice was to put the drywall back up, and then wait a year or two for when we could take the kitchen down to the studs. 

Sorry, Dad, I'm pretty sure you said, "Use the reciprocating saw and do it now."

It was gross. Like, beyond gross. The entire soffit apparently served as a mouse superhighway for the last thirty years, and I was SO GLAD for my super filter mask because YUCK.

Here, speaking of filters, have an artistic shot of the chaos. Yes, I did also pull down the wall next to the furnace chimney. Why? Um, it was easier than the soffit. Also, it was there. Jesse wasn't home. Did I need a reason?

I'm pretty sure the author of xkcd is watching me on hidden cameras.

Finally, after two crazy days of kitchen demo, the soffits were out, the heating duct was duly adjusted, and it was time to do the countertops. 

If money were no object, I would have put in soapstone. It's gorgeous and patinas nicely. You can sand out scratches, it's non-reactive, and so much more user-friendly than granite or marble. From everything I've read, it's very much a "living" surface, one that changes over time and ages with the house. 

Source: Pinterest

Except not only is soapstone very very expensive, it's almost impossible to source on this side of the country. Apparently it's easier to find on the East Coast, where it's a much more common material, but here on the left coast, you have to special order it, which makes it even more expensive. And we have a lot of counter space. It just wasn't going to happen, at least not in this decade. 

In the meantime, our countertops were navy blue laminate, and although they were in mostly usable condition, it wasn't very pretty. I'm a superficial person, I need it to be pretty. I mean, with our gorgeous new sink, the entire kitchen needed a makeover.

After extensive research, I discovered a technique online where I could skimcoat the existing laminate with a concrete-like product called Ardex Feather Finish. By adding black concrete pigment, I could approximate the color and texture of the soapstone I wanted, for a fraction of the cost.

The entire process of skimcoating was 100% easier than I expected. Because some of the laminate was peeling, I added a layer of 1/4 inch backerboard to all the countertops, so the Ardex had a perfect surface to adhere to. Each layer was supposed to take 15 minutes to dry, but it ended up being more like 12 hours; I was being enthusiastic about putting it on.

I could have gotten away with one or two layers of the Feather Finish, but I wasn't achieving the charcoal color I wanted, so I ended up doing four layers, with the proper color ending up being one bottle of Quickrete charcoal concrete pigment per box of Feather Finish. 

Once the final layer was dry, I sanded it first with 60 grit sandpaper, to knock down all the large lumps, and then 120 grit to polish it up. I was supposed to sand between each layer, but I'm lazy, so lumps from the earlier coats ended up showing through the final coat. The effect actually looks like striations in real stone, so that was a pleasant surprise. 

 

Yep, that's my ShopVac taped to my orbital sander. A poor girl's dust reduction system, if you will.

The end result is fantastic. I love it, and it's so much better than what I could have hoped for. The texture is very much like honed stone, and there are just enough imperfections that it won't be too much of a tragedy the first time I drop a heavy bowl on it. 

 

Right now, it's got two coats of 511 Impregnator Sealer on it to prevent staining and make it water-resistant, so it's darkened up quite a bit, and when that's cured in a day or two, I'll put on two or three coats of Minwax Polycrylic on it to prevent scratches. I use Polycrylic to seal all of my projects - including the kitchen table I refinished at the old apartment - and I've never once had an issue with scratching or peeling, and once it's cured, both it and the Impregnator are food-safe.

So. Counters are done. Time to install the gorgeous sink!

Before I'd done the Feather Finish, I'd made a template of the sink from the sink box (carefully tracing around the edges of the sink to ensure proper fit) and cut the counter to size. It should have been perfect...except it wasn't, as I am coming to realize about this house. We couldn't get it in. So we pulled it back out, and sawed some more off the edge of the cabinets, and tried again.

Still nope. So out it comes, and we saw some more off, and that doesn't work, so we cut from a different area, and that STILL doesn't work. I MEASURED THE DAMN SINK. ITS CARDBOARD TEMPLATE HAS AN INCH OF SPACE AROUND THE EDGE! There is NO REASON this sink should not be fitting, except it just. WON'T.

We haul it back out - keep in mind that this sink weighs more than I do - and I hack quite a bit off the cabinets. 

I'm pretty sure the N is for NOT FITTING.

At this point, it's getting close to 9pm. We both have to be up by 6am, and I, for one, would REALLY like to shower and get the countertop dust out of my hair, but the water is still off because the faucet is disconnected, so we can't. So we try to wiggle it in place one more time.

And then this happens:
 

In case you can't tell, that's the corner of my beautiful, brand new sink, no longer attached. I almost cried.

That's when we decided to call it a night.

The next day, we inspected the damage. It turns out that with a little epoxy, the crack will be almost invisible, and the sink itself isn't structurally damaged. After way too much finagling, it is, at this point, precisely level and more or less in position.

THE FAUCET

After the ordeal of the sink, I thought the faucet would be fairly straightforward. Oh, how innocent I was.


Jesse and I had spent the better part of the week prior trying to find a faucet we liked. Our options were limited by a) budget and b) the single hole in the Domsjo. I really wanted something in a warm, classic brass, but in the end, we settled on a Hjuvik from IKEA. It wasn't the cheapest, but it was big enough for our giant sink, and it felt much more sturdy than comparable models at the plumbing store. Plus, it came with a 10-year warranty, and warranties are good, right?

 The inspiration, via Pinterest.

 The reality, via IKEA.

It turns out that most IKEA faucet supply lines do not connect up with American plumbing without a little help. The supply lines were 3/8", while the lines from the wall were 1/2". After reading many horror stories online about Frankensteinian DIY line connections, we ended up just finding a couple of 3/8" to 1/2" adapters at Home Depot. While we were there, we picked up a few extra parts for the drain assembly, since I'd been wrestling with the stupid garbage disposal for the last few hours and couldn't seem to make any headway.

So we got home, and managed to cobble together the drain pipes, with no small amount of silicone goo. Then, we hooked up all the supply lines, and discovered that they both LEAKED. And not just a little bit. We took our degraded gaskets to the plumbing store down the street, and were told that not only did they not carry that size, we'd have to run entirely new line. Yes, we will eventually, since we've got polybutylene lines that are no longer up to code, but we were flying to Alabama the next day for a weeklong vacation, and our sink was still dripping a quart of water every few hours. (And remember, there is no water shutoff. Even turning it off at the curb didn't seem to make any difference.)

Long story short, I gobbed everything up with approximately a pound of silicone goo, and then we left on vacation. (That's another post for another time.) While we were gone, I ordered some assorted gaskets from Amazon, and they were waiting for us when we got home. Tonight, I spent three hours with my head under the sink, carefully putting everything back together and chasing drips around, but we've finally done it. 

We're not going to win any prizes for beauty, but the faucet works, the drain works, and nothing is leaking (knock on wood).
 

My gorgeous sink is installed and functional, and we can FINALLY go back to taking hot showers without having to go to the basement to turn the water on first. Plumbing would be SO MUCH EASIER if it didn't involve water.

 Whew. Now I'm going to bed. 

For queen and country!

How many crown-related titles can I come up with? Not many, apparently - I blame my heathen colonial roots on that. The only crowns we have in this country are the ones that come from the dentist. (Not that I have any of those. Anyway.)

I could blame the long radio silence on a great many things - namely, my lovely baby sister getting weddinged to her equally lovely wife - but to be perfectly honest, I've been avoiding the crown molding because it looks hard. I've probably watched two hours of Youtube videos of distinguished craftsmen earnestly explaining to their patient camera operators how to properly set a miter. I've slowly chopped about eight feet of crown into six-inch sections trying to get it right, but it's a complicated formula of bevel-miter-fence-crown, and while an infinite number of monkeys may eventually bang out the complete works of Shakespeare, this particular monkey doesn't have the finances for an infinite amount of crown. (Even as cheap as it is at my favorite store.)

So...I've been avoiding it. Until tonight, when Incredible Builder Mom sent me a link on Pinterest that is probably the best tutorial I've ever seen in my life. 

 

Source: The ever-fabulous Sawdust Girl. I could kiss her dusty boots right now.

So I followed her directions, and made my own templates:

And once I got the bevel-miter-fence-crown combos ironed out, it was - dare I say - easy. I only stopped tonight once my project manager (aka Jesse) gently pointed out that it was getting late, and we like our neighbors and want them to continue liking us and our noisy pneumatic nailer. 

Yes, there are gaps large enough to drive a truck through, but that's what caulk is for, right? Right. It's part of the, erm, charm of discount trim. Or possible the innate charm of our house. Definitely not the fault of my miter saw Dad's miter saw. 

And yes, the ceiling paint does stop right in the kitchen. That's another project for another paycheck.

 

LOOK AT THAT! It looks like an actual almost-finished house. (And feminism be damned, that horrible boob light has got to go.)

And speaking of looking, I fully recognize that this blog is a vanity project. I am awesome. The things I do are awesome. Occasionally I even finish an awesome thing:

This is the built-in bookshelf in the dining room - painted and done! (Please ignore the monster plant. I rescued it from a dumpster right around the time we moved, but neither it nor I have been happy with any of the places I've put it in so far. It's a work in progress.) There are additional shelves drying in the garage, which hopefully I'll be able to put up tomorrow, provided I remember where all the hardware is. 

 

There is no before. There is only during. 

Construction can be very existential.

  
The bookshelves started out life as laminate IKEA BILLY units. I primed them with Zinsser water-based primer, which is my new favorite thing ever, because I didn't even have to sand the laminate before priming. This stuff adheres like crazy to EVERYTHING.(Including, um, the metal bits of the paintbrush, should one inadvertently allow it to dry. Oops) Once the bookcases were primed, I made a base out of 2x4s to raise them enough so our wide baseboard could comfortably wrap around, anchored the units to studs and added trim, caulked around the edges and painted. 

Yeah, I'm pretty pleased with how it's turned out so far.

In related news, I have finished five gallons of paint. This should be a triumphant story, but it's not. After relying almost exclusively on recycled or mismixed paint for my color needs, having to actually buy new white paint was annoying, and also having to pay $80 for a giant tub of Glidden Ceiling and Trim was even more annoying. I was certainly not going to pay twice that for the higher-quality Behr stuff, and the biggest tragedy of all is that Metro has been sold out of their Mountain Snow all freaking summer. It's a problem. The other problem? The coverage. I put four coats of the Glidden on the above bookshelf in the dining room IN ADDITION to the primer, and I swear there are still spots I can see the dark laminate lurking underneath. (I have been informed by my beloved that I may in fact be crazy. We do try to exemplify romance.)

So. It may be time to buy a brand of paint that doesn't suck. I can already feel my bank account crying. My paintbrush hand, however, is crying right now from overuse, so it may in fact be worth it. 

Honey, you should see me in a crown...

This week has been bzzzzzzzy. Not that the others aren't...I'm just feeling more than a little self-imposed pressure. I told myself ages ago that I wanted to at least get the downstairs trim up in time for the deluge of relatives for my lovely sister's wedding...which is next weekend. Time crunch! Am I close?

For the love of god someone please paint over the fire alarm shadow. That's just gross. 

Um. We're getting there. And so far, it's only Thursday!  I got time, I got time. I've got NINE DAYS. And I don't recall explicitly saying I'd have everything PAINTED by the wedding. (Details.)

Luckily, the seemingly-endless linear footage of MDF trim we got at my new favorite store came primed, so all I have to do is slap enough white paint on it to make it less of a chore when I go back through and caulk and fill all the nail holes I'm leaving. This is my first time using a pneumatic nailer, so perhaps I can be excused for taking WAY too long to realize it was jamming every other nail, so most of the baseboards I've put up are completely covered in holes that do not actually have nails in them. (I was sitting there on the floor trying to figure out why thirty nails didn't seem to be actually holding the baseboards on the walls. Oops.) In the end, Incredible Builder Dad came through with valuable wisdom, and recommended oiling the nailer. Turns out two drops of sewing machine oil in the air inlet before every use makes a happy, dare I say well-oiled nailer. KACHUNK KACHUNK KACHUNK. 

 Look at that! Baseboard, shoe and all. Just gorgeous, that's what that is. 

(Never mind the bookcase. That's getting painted later.)

So far, with nine days to go, I've got all of the baseboard with at least one coat of paint. Most of the living room/dining room baseboard is in place, and has even been shod by the stairs. Half the crown has been painted, and some of it is up, although I've been avoiding the bits that need to be coped, because that just looks annoying. (It won't be. I found a great tutorial for Dremel coping, and if there's anything I love, it's an excuse to Dremel something.)

 It's starting to look like a real, livable house! And it's a mess. Naturally.

I'm not 100% sure that weird stair column is structural, but I'm also not sure it's not, so...

I still haven't decided what to do with it.

I, um, still don't have any sawhorses. 

What I do have is a little black truck, which works just as well.

In yet another chapter of But It Was Free!: An Autobiography, we were on our way to our friends' house last Sunday for hamburgers and s'mores, when what do my searching eyes behold?

Free chairs! And despite being white and so very, erm, retro, they are not only in good shape, they are mostly clean. And now they're mine. (No, I have no idea what I'll do with them. Don't ask questions!)

Gimme a little less talk and a lot more action

August has been incredibly busy, first with my cousin's wedding in Montana - which was very lovely and fantastically fun - and then our dear friends Erik and Alex tied the knot last weekend. With my sister and her lovely wife getting weddinged in two weeks, September promises to be just as exciting. Forget June - late summer is the real wedding season!

Some highlights from Montana:

I am stubborn. Just ask this ceramic buffalo.

Being happy tourists with the fam at the Lewis and Clark museum in Great Falls.

See? Wipe the sawdust off and we look pretty darn good.

As such, I've been working on various projects in fits and spurts, but it doesn't feel like I've accomplished anything. (Although that's probably because I have about a million things going at once, so even if I do manage to finish something, it's right onto the next.) I do have a few awesome things to report.

You've got mail

The mailbox that came with the house was huge and didn't close very well, and only came with one key. I found a cute little one in the scratch-and-dent section at Home Depot, spray-painted it red because we obviously needed a red mailbox, and voila! It's less "hey you crazy people don't steal my mail" and more "welcome, nice postal carrier!" 

Before and after.

I used a matte Rustoleum spraypaint called "Paprika", which is slightly on the orange side of red. It'll work well for both fall and winter decorations. However, I didn't really think through the overall color scheme, and a red mailbox may preclude the red door I was thinking about. (Oops.) When we get around to painting the house at some point, I'd love to have dark gray walls with sharp white trim and colorful accents, and having two red things on the front porch might be too much red. (I may also be overthinking something we won't be able to afford for quite a while.) At some point, I want to replace the boring metal door with something with more character (and maybe a window). 

Moving up in the world

Even though we bought trim for the downstairs a few weeks ago, I've been putting it off because I still needed to paint the stairs, which could only be done on a day when I'm home alone and the cats are locked in the basement, to minimize feet and grubby little paws making a mess of the stain. I finally had that day a couple of weeks ago, and stained the treads and painted the risers. It looks about a thousand percent better! I still need to caulk along the edges and touch up a few spots where the painter's tape pulled off some of the polycrylic (my fault for taping when it wasn't quite dry - so impatient) but it's done enough to make me happy. 

Before, during and (mostly) after

 
Bringing dressy back

This is easily my favorite project I've finished, and I am SO FREAKING GLAD it's done. The next time I suggest stripping the paint from something, someone please hit me with a shovel, because DEAR GOD this was a real pain in the neck. SO MANY TINY CORNERS.

Sadly, I apparently didn't take any before shots, which I deeply regret because oh lordy it was ugly. Someone had abandoned this dresser on the sidewalk after coating it top-to-bottom in drippy gold spraypaint and then decoupaging heavy blue paper to the top. I stripped the paint with my trusty heat gun (probably 15 hours of stripping over the last three months) and then sanded and stained it with my favorite Minwax Red Oak. (I've used red oak on everything, from the shelves at the apartment to the stair treads to this dresser. It makes everything glow.) On a splurge, I added fancy little white drop pulls from Anthropologie. (Despite being ridiculously expensive for everything else, I've found Anthro to be pretty reasonable for hardware, especially since they have unique things you can't find elsewhere.)

Look, here it is lurking in the back of the picture 

of another project! Too embarrassed to show its face.

Ta da! All dressed up. (Please ignore my messy kitchen.)

I haven't decided if it's going to stay there in the kitchen, but it's nice having a little extra counter space, and I get to moon over my hard work every time I get a drink of water. Maybe I'm a snob, but I don't understand why people paint perfectly gorgeous wood. Guh, so gorgeous.

But it was free!

I love stuff. The only thing better than stuff is free stuff. Like...this goofy overbuilt entertainment center. 

So fantastic! So giant! So heavy! So...something!

The scene: a happy couple driving home from...somewhere.
Me: "STOP STOP STOP STOP I WANT THAT!" 
Jesse: "Wait, do you actually want that?" 
Me: "YES IT'S PERFECT AND I NEED IT."
Jesse (resigned): "Well, okay, let me go back around the block."
Me: [presses nose to window fervently praying no one else snatches it before we get there.]

And no, there was never any danger of anyone else snatching it. Even I know that. It was spraypainted a glossy black that was drippy and chipping. The black was actually very much okay - so much okay that I decided this crazy piece needed to stay black - but it needed a better paint job and a little TLC.

Enter my new toy, the Critter: 

Via Amazon. 

It's a tiny sprayer that hooks up to an air compressor and uses pint mason jars to hold the paint. I bought it because I've wanted a paint sprayer, and other bloggers absolutely rave about it. The mason jars are particularly handy, especially since I bought a bunch of resealable plastic lids at Fred Meyer, and can store the thinned paint in the mason jar until I need it again. (Like, say, for the second coat...if I need one.) Some paint I've used so far hasn't needed thinning, but the black definitely did, and I just added a bit of distilled water until it flowed freely. It makes painting SO FAST AND EASY. 

Repainted with Behr Marquee Black Basalt in eggshell. 

(Yes, I BOUGHT fancy black paint and it was really freaking expensive.) 

I still need to attach wheel casters to the bottom (because seriously, this thing weighs twice as much as I do) but when it's done I think it'll be good for the media room/den/video game cave, because the shelves we've got in there right now aren't really wide enough for the Xbox, and I'd like to be able to close off the TV and all its associated cords and accessories if needed. (Ostensibly, my goal is for the video game cave to be a potential second guest room if needed, and as such, it should be as pleasant as possible. 

 Not just a one-night stand

...actually two nightstands. I had two of the little RAST dressers left over from the master bedroom built-ins (which are still not done, pending arrival of the knobs at some point) so I painted and stained them, and dressed them up with some fancy new pulls from Home Depot.

Painting! (Ignore the legs on the dressers...I added them for height and decided later they didn't match the overall aesthetic, so I took them off again. What can I say - I'm mercurial.)

And done! And blurry. Oh, phone camera.

When Jesse and I moved in together in 2009, our one-bedroom apartment had room for a bed and one night stand, which we've been sharing ever since. It is the height of luxury to finally be in a place where I don't have to roll over him to get a drink of water in the middle of the night. As an added bonus, I picked up two RANARP lights from IKEA and installed those on either side of the bed. Now we each have our own nightstand and light! 

It's like living in a hotel, only with more cats. 

A sinking feeling

Remember how I love free stuff? Our lovely friends Faith and Janet remembered, too, and gifted us their castoff sink from their long-overdue bathroom remodel. 

Now they have TWO fancy new bathrooms, and we have one fancy old sink to replace one of the two monstrosities that live in the upstairs bathrooms. The bathroom remodels are well down the line (I'm crossing my fingers that the kitchen is first) but this sink is cool and old, and, as Faith pointed out, even comes with a caked-on chip of soap. It's ready to go! Thanks, ladies!

The Doors

Remember also how I was wrestling with what color to paint the door so it coordinated-with-but-didn't-match our pretty paprika mailbox?

Eventually, all these problems mostly solve themselves. 

In my defense, I DIDN'T MEAN TO. I went to the Habitat for Humanity ReStore to get a couple of new $0.50 paint scrapers, since I irreparably gummed up my other one scraping the paint off the gold dresser, and while I was there, I had to check out the door selection, since I still haven't found any solid core five-panel interior doors like I want, and these matching beauties were 50% off. TWO GIANT DOORS WITH GIANT WINDOWS AND LOVELY WOOD BITS THAT MATCH THE WOOD BITS ON MY SCREEN DOORS, FOR ONLY $100?? I spent about an hour staring at them, trying to justify the purchase in my head, but in the end, they're EXACTLY the right dimensions for both the front and back doors, so of course they came home with me. I'm sure they were originally for a double entrance, but I'm content to split them up and have two gorgeous entries. The varnish is pretty much gone on the side that faced all the weather, so I'm going to (gently) sand and refinish, but other than that, they're in great shape. Also, I would like to point out, heavy as hell. 

I love them. I love them so much I want to pet them and coo at them. Doors!

This weekend

It's a three-day weekend! And in celebration of Labor Day, I plan to labor heavily for its entirety. My goal is to get at least SOME of the trim painted and maybe maybe maybe even up - I know, it's good to dream big - so we'll see how much happens. It's sprinkling rain right now and there's absolutely no room in my garage to set up a painting center, soooo....more indoor projects may take precedence. (Like vacuuming. This place is so furry you have no idea.)