I hope you all had a wonderful Labor Day weekend! We had quite the weekend and with all the projects we tackled, we put the labor in Labor Day! I thought I would share some of the projects that we did.
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| After the doors came out. There's a lot of work ahead for Steve! |
Our first (and biggest) project we tackled was pulling our french doors at the back of the house, replacing both the header and footer, building a new door frame and reinstalling the doors. It took the entire holiday weekend to get this project done and for two nights we had a gaping hole in the back of our house. Luckily Steve was able to put a tarp up to half-way keep the critters out (that will be another story for another time).
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| Still need to paint and put up trim, but at least we have a back door! |
While I did help Steve with this project there were times that he didn't need my help. So that left me free to tackle a couple of other things that needed to be done.
The first and the only thing that I did this weekend that was not a necessity, was to paint our front door. The door itself is solid wood and a beautiful door. However the sun had damaged the outside of the door over the years. Last year I tried to sand it and stain it, but because of the damage the stain did not go on even and so we had a two-tone door. It was not pretty.
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| Our two-tone door. |
I finally talked Steve into letting me paint it. But more than that, I was able to paint it red! I love the color that I ended up with. I purchased Valspar Posh Red. It is not a bright cherry red, neither one of us wanted to go down that road. It is more of a brick red and looks great with our tan house color...otherwise known as Canyon Ridge. :-)
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| Our beautiful red door! |
I'm not sure if the picture does it justice, but I painted it in a way where you can still see the browns from the door stain coming through. You can also see the grain of the wood which Steve loved. All-in-all I thought it turned out great!
Another fast project I did was spray paint our back outdoor light, sorry no pic. :-( It was originally black, but was extremely faded. I had some metallic oil rubbed bronze spray paint that I had used for another project. It was perfect and took less than five minutes to spruce it up! Before I did that I had been ready to buy a new one!
The third project that we started but didn't get to finish was replacing our rotted trim boards around the house. While Steve was working on installing the back door, I primed and painted the trim boards so that our last day before going back to work we could put them up. Well, as I was removing our rotted trim boards, I realized that there were several places where our siding was also rotted. So guess what? The trim boards did not get put up, and now we have to purchase siding and replace what we need to.
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| Not a pretty site...bad trim boards and lots of weeds! |
After tackling the door this weekend, another big project was not what either of us wanted. We were ready to throw in the towel and just call some one to put vinyl siding on it, but money-wise it is cheaper (although more labor on our part) to replace the rotted pieces, so we will be doing that as soon as we can.
While I was taking off the bad trim, I was also trying to weed, which
was just ridiculously out of control! We really let our place go this
spring and summer, but we had good reasons. Now, we just have to get it
back in shape before winter comes!
So our next projects (besides the siding and trim of course) will be to move the stairs on our front and back decks and to replace the railing on our decks. I also bought some cool fabric which I will be making curtains, recovering a footstool, and recovering some bar stools. I can't wait! I will keep you updated on how that all goes.
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| Can't wait to use this fabric! |
Keep an eye out for my homemade Christmas Gift series. I will start posting that very soon. I am getting so excited about it as I get everything together and start working on it. I know you guys will love it!
Let me know in the comments below, what did you do for Labor Day? Rest or labor?
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