A little paint makes a new door.

Our front door – well, really all our exterior doors – were in pretty rough shape when we purchased the house. We’ve since updated our garage door, but our front door & screen door were still in for a long-overdue make over.

Yuck. I bought some indoor/outdoor black paint from Lowes, and a new screen door from Menards.

I was feeling brave, until I made the first brush stroke. Then I started to have second thoughts. Black seems so permanent to me, but I managed to keep painting through the knot in my throat…

And voila, big changes in the front door area!

I knew it would be a big change to paint the door black, but it’s even better than I imagined! I love love love the black exterior. Looks brand new, but it’s the same door as before! Ten dollars brought big impact!

I took an even bigger risk and painted the interior black also. I’m still not certain how I feel about it, and the pics are awful with the lighting, but in keeping with my “keep it real” motto for this blog, here ya go…

My mom & sister like it, and I think I do too. I’m still deciding though. I really just liked the glass image reflecting in the photo frame in the photo below…

Oh, and our door that goes from the garage into the house – disgusting. Totally disgusting. And that’s after I scrubbed and scrubbed it!

So how about this $10 transformation?

Sooo much better!

New garage door.

You know you’re old when…

      you get excited about a garage door.

Yep, that’s me. We have replaced a ton of big items on our house: new roof, new bathroom ceiling, new windows, new septic tank, new water softener, new washer & dryer, new kitchen appliances, new waterproofing system in the basement, and now a new garage door!

Our old {really old} garage door was most likely the original door from the 50s. It was chipping paint terribly and the opener didn’t work either.

The only thing good looking in the photo above is the little girl playing with her pinwheel flower {that she is obsessed with.} I’ll digress with some pinwheel photos for a second…

Digression complete.

Garage doors are stupid expensive, in my humble opinion. I really wanted to keep putting our extra money towards paying off our college loans early, but we also knew there was a chance this chippy paint could be lead paint. Not cool. Especially not cool now that the weather’s nice and we have an outdoor-lovin, mobile little one. No matter how stupid expensive the garage door might be, it’s worth it to get rid of the potential of lead paint.

The first quote we received for a new garage door totaled a couple hundred dollars short of $3,000. {YIKES.} We shopped around garage door specialty stores, called Lowes {got it down to $1,400}, and finally went to Menards and found an insulated door, opener, and contracted installation for a total of $1,100. There’s also an added bonus that the garage door is locally made about 40 minutes away from our house.

Oooh. Ahhh. Pretty white garage door.

And and earlier “before” with old windows, bushes, etc. {Roof is new, so this “before” isn’t even the official first “before.”}

Eugene made a good point; he said it’s funny that the house doesn’t look that much different now because the garage door doesn’t catch your attention {in a bad way} anymore. ;)

Safer. Prettier. Cleaner. Happier.

Trimming back.

Eugene & his super kind friend tackled all the low-lying branches {there were a TON} in our front and back yard. This has been on our “to do” list since we moved in, and every thunderstorm is a big reminder on the necessity of this task.

Here’s some pics of the huge project…

Front yard -

And the after shot. It’s funny how trimming the trees made them look even taller!

And back yard {where most of the work was needed}…

And after…

Fence line…

And after {before we mowed the corner}… Looks SO much better!

Some people may think this isn’t that big of a deal, but by DIY’ing it, we probably saved close to $1,000 {if not more}, not to mention that our place is so much safer now!

Bonfire in February.

This weekend, it was actually nice enough to have a bonfire…in February…in Ohio!

I boxed up all the food for the fire and took it outside.

Eugene invited his brother and sisters over, and the pup was in outdoor heaven!

No folks, it’s not late Summer. Hot dogs on the fire, baked beans, chips, fruit, and brownies with whip cream as frosting {my new favorite dessert}, and friends laughing at/with each other…wondrous things, without a doubt!

My kind of Winter.

Guess what I noticed in my flowerbeds…

Need I remind you that I live in OHIO? Cold, snowy, terrible roads in the Winter, Ohio.

Or more like 60 degrees one day &25 the very next, snow in April & shorts weather in December, allergy & sinus valley Ohio. Yep, I have Spring bulbs popping up in mid January. And I couldn’t be happier about it! I know they’ll probably die when the snow comes, but I love being able to walk the pup outside without boots, a scarf, or gloves. Oh, and the sunshine lately has been a for-sure wondrous thing. :)

Lame-oh, ho, ho.

We’re pretty much slacking on the whole Christmas decorations. Somehow my Christmas decorations that filled our last two apartments look measly in our new house. And it’s a major bummer, but we don’t even have a Christmas tree yet! :(

I picked up some LED outdoor lights last February on sale, so here’s about as festive as it gets for us right now…

Eugene worked hard on putting up these lights, so I don’t want to discredit that, but I’m feeling pretty lame like Scrooge. The plan {aka my plan} is to get a live tree this weekend…although we still can’t find the rest of our lights since the move. Hmm. This story just keeps getting better.

Anyhoo, this post is just about as lame as our decorations, so I’ll sign off here.

Thanks to all the encouraging words and precious messages people sent me following my post Friday about our loss. It has meant so much to me; I truly appreciate it.

P.S. I’m thinking there’ll be a fun post either Friday or Monday, so keep an eye out for it!

Name that flower.

These odd flowers just showed up one day in our back yard. I’m too tired/lazy to google it, so if anyone knows the name of these flowers pass it on to me, will ya?

They’re super pretty, smell sweet, and are pretty common around our neighborhood.  They’re odd little things though – no leaves at all.

Oh, and my mom asked me to post pics of her house so my sister can see her flowers {my sister lives 16 hours away from us.} I’ve talked about it on here plenty, but my mom does such a great job with her flowers. My sister would love to see how pretty it looks, so here’s a few pictures to share the happy blooms with ya, Casey!

My mom’s got a natural gift for landscaping. :) Big post coming on Saturday showing the house improvements. Maybe she’ll know the name of the odd flowers in my backyard that popped up as a happy surprise from the previous owners?