Home Projects Gone Awry

Three weekends ago I decided to tackle my front porch and steps. They are in dire need of painting… again. I rented this mother of a sander from Home Depot and went to town. Except for the fact that it weighs a ton, so is not so fun to lug up the stairs onto the porch, it was very easy to use. I was hoping to be able to sand ALL of the paint off, right down to the wood, but no such luck. There are a LOT of layers of paint on this porch… mostly thanks to me and my need to change the color and design on an almost yearly basis. That green you are seeing was the color of the porch and stairs when we bought this house about 20 yrs ago. I won’t even begin to tell you how many different colors and patterns I’ve painted on this porch since we moved in.

The stairs and railings are going to be replaced. My brother and I have hired someone to do that and the ugly, patched cement is going away too! I’ll post some "after" pics when all that happens.

I know it doesn’t look quite ready, but the floor is actually really smooth now and ready for some primer. Unfortunately, it has rained almost every single day since I finished sanding. It’s going to rain all of this week too, so who knows when I’ll be able to finish this floor. I would like to be able to put the furniture back out here soon! Of course, it’s only about 45 degrees here, so I’m not exactly ready to sit on the porch.

Since I could not work outside, I moved onto a few indoor projects. I painted my china cabinet and etched the glass doors. I stripped all the paint off the hinges thinking it would make it easier to open and close the doors and look better. Unfortunately, I am now not able to get the two doors to line up and shut flush to the frame! What’s with that??? Wouldn’t you think with clean hinges this would be fairly easy to do? I’ve tried using shims behind the hinges, recessing them more, switching the hinge placement, and a million other options. The doors are still not closing properly. So, one is up and one sits on the floor tormenting me daily.

Next, I moved on to recycling the floor cloth I had in my living room. My living room is the coldest room in my house in the Winter, so I’ve decided I’m going to leave the floor bare for the Summer and then buy a colorful, wool rug to keep my feet warm in the Fall. My kitchen floor is old and tired. A kitchen makeover is not in my budget at the moment, but a floor cloth makeover is.

This was the previous design on this floorcloth. I had to cut it down a little to fit in the kitchen.

This is the new design.

Well, this was not without problems either. Once I got the floor cloth down on my floor, I quickly saw that the white stripes on the floor cloth just highlight the fact that my once black and white kitchen floor, is now really an off-white and black floor. 🙁 I’m going to add some gray stripes where the white is. I held up a small sample of gray and it does seem to help.

Hopefully I will resolve all these little problems and be able to post some new pics soon!