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...

Master Bathroom: Paint! {Kind of}

This is more a tease than anything else.  I can't show you the entire paint job because that would reveal the next step!  So here's a peek at the new color we're loving.  This paint, as I mentioned in my first post about the master bathroom, was a $5 find in the Lowe's oops bin. It's a multidimensional color-- when I first saw it in the store, I thought it was green.  Then I put some on the walls and it looked gray.  Light shines in the window, and it shows a little blue.  So obviously the colors in these pictures vary, too.

Guest Bathroom: Painting the Town... or the Bathroom

I knew Mr. Great Indoors was ready for the bathroom to be finished when I came home to this yesterday:

Our usual arrangement is that he builds it and I paint it, and boy has he done a lot of building for this project, mostly in the form of floating drywall.  But things are serious if he picks up a paint brush-- and he spent a few hours cutting in around the bathroom yesterday.

DIY Week: A (Basically) Free Wine Rack

Mr. Great Indoors built us a wine rack within a month of moving into the house.  He didn't have a lot of tools at that point, so he didn't build it to be very complicated. Here's a picture of the old rack from the day of our housewarming party a few years ago.  Boy, don't things look different!  Unpainted cabinets, old sliding glass door, old dishwasher... we don't really miss any of those things these days.

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.