A Bifold Door Headboard

If you're like me, you've ripped every set of bifold doors out of your house.  And you've probably stuffed them in your attic until you get around to donating them.  Well, Young House Love showed me a better way.  Without further ado...

Correcting the French Mistake

If you understand the title of this post, you either know me really well or you (like me) have seen Blazing Saddles a million times.  Or both.

This is the continued story of our &!@#$% patio door.  I wrote about our latest mishap here.  About two weeks after we ordered it, our glass arrived at Home Depot.  So Mr. Great Indoors and our handy friend, who you'll recognize from our last door installment, took some time out of their Sunday to install it.  (P.S.  Thanks to my friend H for taking pictures of this process while I was at work over the weekend!)

You'll Never Guess...

Maybe this is a familiar story to some of you:  "So Mr. Great Indoors was mowing the yard this afternoon, when..."

Oh, yeah.  Just our luck, Mr. GI had just started up the mower last week over at the shed when it kicked out a rock that traveled UNDERNEATH OUR PATIO TABLE to hit our BRAND NEW PATIO DOOR.  Sorry for the caps/yelling, but I still can't believe this.

The Great Door Project of 2011: Part 2

Come to think it of, this isn't part two-- it's more like part four.  First we changed the locks on the front and side doors, then a pesky piece of pea gravel shattered our sliding glass door and we replaced it with a French door, then I painted the jambs, but that wasn't good enough so now we're on to the painting of the front and side doors.  Whew!

When I last left you, I had been pondering a paint color for the doors. I decided on Fabulous Red (Valspar 1011-2), partially because it looked so good with our orangey-reddish brick, but also because Mr. Great Indoors put his vote in for that color and I couldn't help but agree.  And come on-- it's Faaaaaaabulous.

The Great Door Project of 2011: Part 1

That's right-- I knew as soon as we painted the French doors on the back of the house that our disgusting front and side doors just wouldn't cut it.  Here's a refresher of the side door grossness, taken when we changed the locks:

French Door: Finished!

We are looooving our French Door, especially now that we've finished it all up.

I took a few days to paint the trim inside and out, and boy did it make a difference.  First I sanded the threshold with a rough then smooth sandpaper (forgot which numbers), then put on two coats of black outdoor paint.  The white trim around the sides took three coats.

The Princess and the Pea (Gravel)

Warning:  this is an incredibly long post, but there's a ton to cover.  If you're interested, all the product links are at the very bottom of the page with the price breakdown.  No princesses were harmed in the making of this blog post.

Who can guess what these two things have in common?

Locked and Loaded

Isn’t it great when a calm, relaxing weekend actually results in something productive?  Mr. Great Indoors and I had one of those this past weekend.  Time with friends and a good bike ride on Saturday, and then some house-related retail therapy on Sunday.

Our project this weekend was to replace the locks on our side and front doors.  I'd been having issues the past few weeks with my key (it wasn't catching the lock, so I had to stand in front of the door for five minutes every time jiggling it... annoying).  We were also not quite sure when the locks were replaced last and didn't really relish the idea of any former tenants attempting their old keys.  So we finally bit the bullet and set off to get new locks.  Unfortunately, the Lowe's right down the road didn't have many interesting locks in our price range (like this one... blah), and off we went to the Home Depot across town.  They had a slightly different selection, and we ended up deciding on a set by Defiant in Satin Nickel that came with two deadbolts, two handles, and four keys (unfortunately, I couldn't find the same product online).  Perfect for our front and side doors!  In addition to the lock set, we also bought a can of Rustoleum Satin Nickel to match the door guard to our fancy nickel knobs.  More about that in a minute.