I randomly took down the blind one night while Matt was giving Luke his bath. Sometimes you just need to dive in to give yourself motivation. The next day I filled the blind and other holes on the back, let it dry, and then gave it all a light sanding.
It took me over an hour to do a first coat while Matt put Luke to bed that night. Due to various reasons, I don't remember them all now, it took me a week to get to a second coat. I had valid reasons at the time... The best part of this project was using giant boxes to block the windows in the mean time.
I have this thing about having blinds open. I open many during the day but they are all closed every night. I don't like people being able to see into our house. When I was a teenager our computer faced a wall with a patio door behind it. After a room renovation we were without a window covering for awhile. I remember being up "late" (like 10pm) talking to people on AIM (because this was before everyone had cell phones and waaaay before texting) and turning around every 5 minutes or so, always thinking I'd see somebody watching me from that patio door window. It seriously scared the crap out of me (but not enough to keep me off AIM, obviously).
Anyways, I wasn't going to leave the view from this window open since it faces the street and much of our house can be visible through it. So I hauled those boxes out every night and put them back in Matt's office every morning. That really should have pushed me to do a second coat sooner but it didn't.
I did a second coat and the next night Matt hung our new blind. It's similar to the blinds in the rest of the room and doesn't have any cords or way for Luke to strangle himself. Plus, it doesn't make a loud knocking every time the door is moved. The sunlight behind it also gives off a nice glow every morning which I love.
Once I got to this point I knew there was one step left - those mismatched deadbolt and door handle (original to the house) were really bugging me. Really really. Neither match the transom opening bar either and the brass door handle had seen better days. After a little more procrastinating I finally gave the handle and deadbolt a dose of ORB (pretty much following this post from YHL). The new color is close to the transom bar which is good enough.
 |
| It's been a long time since that original door knob plate was off! |
I had Luke crawling around outside while I was doing my first coat. As soon as I stepped away to put the can on the patio table he crawled right over to my freshly painted handles and put his hand right on them. It took 5 minutes of scrubbing his wiggly little hand to get most of it off. If you have ever had to scrub the hand of a wiggly 13 month old you know this isn't easy. He was indoors for the remaining 2 coats.
I let the handles dry about 7 hours after their last coat before reinstalling them that night. I would have let them dry longer but I knew we'd be in and out that door often the next day and had already scratched myself using pliers to open the door. I'm kinda in love with the new look. It makes me want to ORB everything...I know some more handles that need to match...
So, once again, a project that wasn't started until months after I decided to do it and then took awhile to complete. BUT...it finally is and, once again, I'm glad I took the time to do it. The new door color and blind look so much cleaner and having matching door hardware just makes it. I keep admiring it...sign of time well spent.
And because I love a good before/after comparison...
No comments:
Post a Comment