If you give a mouse a hammer. .

 I've definately been slacking on blogging lately!  Things have been busy.   But renovations have continued!  The front door was stripped and painted and all new hardware and locking mechanisms installed.  Stripping off the old paint was NOT for the faint of heart.  The stripper we bought was supposedly going to take everything off in one giant peel.  Um. no.  So we had to buy another stripped and used that, but eventually we got down to bare wood and were able to paint the door.

Hot on the heels of this front door masterpiece we moved to our back door.  Our previous back door was a hollow core door.  Not the best option for dealing with cold New England winters.  We removed the old door, took out the old casings and installed this new insulated door.  It has also since been painted red.  I love red doors because I feel they are so welcoming!  After that, we replaced the back exterior storm door.  By that time we had it down to a 90 minute install.  This door led to a very tiny back hallway.  Literally the space is 16 square feet.  It had dark dingy panelling and was not a well functioning space.  We took down all the old panelling and installed white beadboard.  We found lots of air leaks and sealed those up with foam insulation.  We caulked.  We removed the old yucky suspended ceiling and scraped and painted the original ceiling which looks much nicer.  Because the house was originally attached to a walkway to a barn there were multiple door casings that had been built out over the years.  We removed those that were either not appealing to look at and/or unnecessary.  I did save some lovely woodwork that I know my grandfather must have made.  I sanded it with my orbital sander and reinstalled that in two areas. 

Then I decided that the entry floor looked ugly.  So I took up the VCT tiles, scraped off all the old adhesive and laid a new floor.  I'd like to say that was quick--it is only 16 square feet, but it took me far longer than it should have.  I have a hard time visualizing how to cut around mouldings and I had some wonky cuts to make.  Eventually it was laid though.  I am awaiting the order of the floor trim that will go all around it and seam it in visually to the other spaces.  It should be in  by the end of next week and that is a quick install.

Isn't it bright?  It is also so much warmer in a space that was previously VERY drafty!  We are loving it.  Now I am starting to purchase the little decor items that we will deck it out with.

After I did that, I decided that the recycling closet which is located in this little space needed to be spiffed up.  After all, the outside of it all ready had gotten a face lift because we had removed the door and covered it with bead board and put on new hardware.  The hardware was reminiscent of what was originally there but more functional. (we need a latch that keeps the dog out of the recycling!)

I wanted to keep the feeling of the original work my grandfather had done making this closet and i think we stayed true to that.  That is also his woodwork that I restored around the door.  But inside, the closet was UGLY.  It had a tiny lino covered floor that was old (as in older than me and I am not young!) and it was dirty and dingy.  I took everything out, re-did the walls inside, laid a very tiny floor with left over tiles and put in a shelf and a hanging basket.

So much more functional!  So clean and organized!  LOL

The last thing I did was to replace our bathroom door.  That door was an old hollow core door with a thin veneer over it.  Years of hard use had caused the veneer to be peeling.  You could not hang a hook on the door for a towel or change of clothes because the door was hollow.  We are a family of 6. We need things like hooks.  The bathroom is also small and there is not a lot of hanging space for the myriad of necessities.  

 This is the bathroom door right after we hung it.  This was a pain.  The door size is not standard. Ordering custom would have meant at least a 2 month wait. (and I feel that was optimistic in these times of Covid.  I ordered a freezer in early May and delivery has been postponed three times all ready. We are now looking hopefully at an early December delivery.  But I digress. . . To avoid the delay of a custom order we ordered the smallest door we could and had a friend rip 1/2 inch off the door.  We could trim the casings ourselves but as yet we still only have hand tools, though I really want a small table saw! This is the door before it was painted.  You can glimpse it painted in the picture of the entry floor because the bathroom is literally right off that entry.  I still have to figure out what to do about the open space between door and tile.  It is not wide enough to really effectively put tile there, though I did salvage some and might try to see if I can make that work.  But thus far, I have not really moved into that space yet so I am just beginning to explore and see what will look best.

It has been fun working around the house.  Doing projects like this on an old house allow me to explore its history.  I am the fourth generation to live in this house.  When I did things like removed the paneling and found this garish asian themed wall paper it was fun to text my mom and ask her the story behind it.  When I removed a casing to install beadboard and found square nails, that was pretty cool as well.  

I don't do well with lots of down time, and I am very much an extrovert. So staying safe in Covid has been emotionally taxing and taking on these projects has been a productive and healthy way to stay sane.  Our space is improved both in the way it looks and in functionality.  I learn new skills and i have things to occupy weekends that used to be filled with gatherings, festivals, field trips and such.  I know we have done other projects too that I forgot to post but this catches up the biggest of those I missed!

Sprucing up the closet

 

I keep looking for projects and keep finding them!  This was from a couple weekends ago.  The first picture on the right shows an odd, less than functional kitchen closet.  Apparently many years ago, my grandfather built this closet, sealing off the interior access to our cellar in the process.  My grandmother needed a place to store her Christmas decorations and that literally was the sole purpose of this closet for my whole childhood.  Now in full disclaimer, it did not look as ugly as it does in the first photo on the left.  My grandfather had put up a wall paper that was supposed to look like knotty pine and had a dark brown lino on the floor.  Did that make it better than the picture on the left?  Only marginally.  The closet just did  not work for us.  It was where we wanted to keep cleaning things.  Brooms, cleaning cloths and vacuums, our rug cleaning machine etc.  But it was so dark and hard to see in there.  

So we ripped off the wallpaper, pulled up the lino, admired the newspapers from 1957 that he lined the floor with before putting down the linoleum. and made a plan.  We repaired the sheetrock where needed and put up a faux beadboard.  It is white and truly made such a difference.  We put a quick self stick tile floor in and hung new shelves (which you can't see from this picture) up high for odd things that typically live in this closet.  (it is the place where all our odd vases usually are stored but they were higgly piggly all over the place before.  

I put up peg board squares so we could  hang our cleaning tools and not have them falling all over the place.  I put in a new threshold and then we caulked and trimmed it all out.  It was a tedious job but not really super hard.  And the end result has been a huge improvement in the functionality of the space.

From there we moved on to stripping and sanding our front door but that is a story for another post!

Romance in the time of Covid

 Everything is harder in The Time of Covid.  Small errands take much longer, finding needed products takes longer and typically costs more.  And i our KC who is 16 has his first romance.  A is a lovely young woman and KC is a very caring and respectful young man.  He has been enarmored of her for over a year. She came to our church last fall and they bonded quickly over shared interests in dance and theater.  But they were just friends until the past couple of months.

And Covid makes this so complicated.  A does not live in our city.  So her "bubble" is not really the same as ours. She is schooling remotely, but like my wife and I , her parents both work outside the home.  (Mom is a university professor)

We had to have a weekend where they did not get together because A's mom travelled down south by plane and was down there for a few days to help a friend in crisis.  K and I were just not comfortable with A then coming over to our house for the day.  It was understood by her  parents but it was a hard conversation to have with my teen.  It isn't that he was unkind about it.  He just looked so crestfallen and it literally made me cry inside.

Her trip  quarantine is now over and KC will see A at youth group tonight.  He asked if we thought it would be okay for him to hold her hand when they walked to their cars after youth group.  We said yes, just to please use the hand wipes in the car afterwards.  At some level this all just feels so surreal.  I am so proud that he was careful and mindful of the fact that we need to still take precautions, but my heart hurts for the two of them.  First loves are supposed to be that time of giddy-anything is possible-the world is full of wonder times.   It's not that for them, but it is still special and magical and I am so grateful that it is that.

Camping!

 Last weekend we went camping with friends.  Good friends and good coffee make for a grand weekend.  And I was lucky enough to have both.  I am a tent camper--which appears to be a declining form of camping as I saw RV's everywhere but very few tents (except those doing duty as overflow for the RV folks)  I find this interesting as to me, an RV feels like I am a hermit crab, carrying my house along with me.  I enjoy the freedom of choosing minimal essentials and making it work for the time we are there.  I usually forget something--the only thing that would ever cause panic would be the coffee pot!  The pot above has camped with me for more years than I dare to count.  It was falling apart til I had to lend it to my friend this weekend and he fixed it before returning it to me.  Clever guy can fix anything. But, I was able to fix their caffeine deprivation because I had an old fashioned perk pot and they had a Keurig and the electricity at the campground went out!  Old school to the rescue!

Between our two families we had 10 kids, ranging from 3 to 17  It was so much fun.  Evening campfires, games at the picnic tables, several communal meals.  Lissa got to night swim, which is always a big deal at 13.  I remember how special that was at that age.  There were smores, laughter and a birthday celebration for our friend's son who turned 14.

This will be our only campout this Summer of Covid.  But it was a most excellent one, with warm and wonderful memories that I will grasp as tightly as I do that coffee on a chilly camping morning!

A shiny new door!

 This weekend we tackled installing a real storm door on our front porch.  I wish I had been smart enough (or not embarassed) to take a picture of the old screen door that was there for literally years.  It was slightly too big for the opening and did not close all the way.  The screening had been busted out on the bottom level by a youngling trying a karate kick and the upper screening was in no great shakes as well.  I wanted a true door that would help block some of the wintry elements so that when you reach the porch in December through whenever winter leaves you have a bit of protection.  

It took most of Saturday but we got the door installed and it is lovely.  There is a screen but the solid bottom will hopefully give stability and prevent cats from trying to climb the screen.  This picture does not show it but above the door is a bit 6 ft long and 36 inch wide opening that we made a frame and screening for as well.  Oh, and the door has an after market door handle with a key lock.  This is so that we can secure the porch if we are in another part of the house and want to give the pets access to the extra room.

Today, we made screens for the top two "windows" beside the door.  That was practically a cake walk for us at this point.  The two openings below those small screened windows though took a goodly amount of time.  Those are plexi glass windows that we made and framed.  We did not want screening because we figured the pets would wreck it and we did not want an indoor pet gaining access to the great outdoors via a torn screen.  Plexiglass is  a bear   interesting to work with.  It is probably easier with a power saw.  Because we don't have that (yet!) we had to score it with a utility knife and then snap it. It did work. There was one jagged section but it is thoroughly covered by the framing so it was not a problem.

The last thing we did was hang out the new mailbox. I bet the mail man is going to be so happy that this job is nearing completion. Our mailbox has been getting moved around a bit while we worked!

Here's a close up of the window!  It is so clear that the cat ran head first into it when they went out onto the porch the first time!

And here is the cat enjoying his new space.  We still have to paint the floor but that won't happen for a few days as I am going camping next weekend!

Screening our Saturday

 You can't really tell from the picture but we built three ginormous screens and installed them on our front porch.  The openings are about 6 ft x 7 ft so it was quite the experience.  We got a good groove on it though and they look really excellent. (pats self on back)  

The next thing we are doing is putting on a new storm door.  We bought that yesterday at the orange big box store.  We want to be able to lock the screen door because we envision times when the indoor cats will be enjoying this space and we don't want a delivery person to open a door and have an indoor furry suddenly outside.  We found out most storm doors don't have locks unless you want to pay a LOT for them.  I am doing this as frugally as possible so that is not an option.  We found out that we can buy an after market door handle that is lockable and install that ourselves on the door.  It cost like $6.00 and our door way under $200

Today I took off the old door, sanded the framing and patched for painting.  I'll probably paint after work during the week so that we can jump right into door installation next Saturday.  After the door is installed we have two side panels that need plexi glass installed. They are down at eye level for dogs and cats and I don't want screening there because I know if they see a squirrel they will blow through it!  Then there are three small upper screens around the door frame to build and install.  After that, I paint the floor and we will be done!

This is by far the biggest project we have done and we are also sandwiching it around my wife's business work.  She has picked up some extra clients to help off set a whopping dental bill, so time is not always available for us to work together.  Big projects like this need two sets of hands frequently.  I can sand, patch and paint on my own. But I don't think even home improvement experts could build 7 foot screens without two people!

My thoughts unmasked!

Since in pandemic times the renovations just.don't.end.  (because seriously what else is there to occupy my time and energies?)  My wife and I need to start making ginormous screens for our front porch. They will be about 7 foot by 8 foot.  We went to the orange big box store for supplies last night.  We had a question on if a staple gun or a brad nailer  would adequately fasten the mitered edges.  We asked an employee if this would work or if there should be some other type of stabilizing agent.

The employee looked at me and said (and I quote) "you mean a paper stapler?"  I'll give you I still had my work clothes on.  Picture older woman in office wear asking this question.  Still. . .  wouldn't the fact that I even used the term "mitered corners" have indicated I had at least a rudimentary knowledge of carpentry.  (or had binge watched 50 million home improvement videos during lockdown?)  Technically both statements are true.

I looked at the fellow and said "I'm a girl, not stupid!" and thankfully he had the good grace to appear abashed.  For the record, I can you the staple gun according to this fount of information.

The incident did not really annoy me as it was such a whacked out comment that I just responded in kind.  But it points to assumptions which are never good.  And in our society at present so many assumptions are being made in so many arenas of our lives, that I am mindful of how scary that is.

There are the people who are making the assumption that being asked to mask up in public is an infringement on their rights. It isn't.  If you don't like it,  please stay home.  Have a friend shop for you if it is impossible to mask up.  Order on line.  Use one of the burgeoning delivery services.  I respect your PTSD, your belief that you are dying of carbon dioxide poisoning, your COPD.  But realistically if you have COPD you are at such high risk of complications with Covid that frankly you should be staying home anyway.  Is being asked to wear shoes in a public building infringing on our rights?  Nope. Because we are a) used to it. b) puritanical about our bodies and c) we have learned that it is no fun to catch athletes foot fungus from walking around bare foot with lots of other folks in the same space.  I have spent the last month communicating with my sister long distance as she fought Covid. She lives in AZ which is a hot spot state. She has asthma.  She appears to have made it through okay but it has been 25 days of worry and she still has pneumonia. She caught it giving a co worker a ride home from work.  They were not masked up in her car. The coworker had no symptoms and did not cough or sneeze once in the vehicle.  So, seriously,  mask up folks!