Coat Closet Door Makeover

Finally, we're past the boring introduction posts!

Now, none of the future posts are going to be real time posts since I have a TON of DIY projects piling up on my phone that I did long before I started this blog. So, if I forget any important points that you need to help you do this project, I'll be more than happy to go back and add whatever is needed - just let me know!

Let's start with an easy one.

Our home was built in 1962, and I'm pretty sure the interior doors haven't been touched since. They are not pretty, and the house is full of them. They're plain, look like plywood with the odd grain, and just make the entire house look outdated.

We first moved into our home just before Christmas. It was fantastic - we bought ourselves a house for Christmas! But we also bought ourselves a TON of work to go with it. My thoughtful mother brought us a gift and it was one big box. I looked inside and YAY! Bronze doorknobs for the entire house. Love. So, in my excitement, I completely forgot to take a photo of the "before" knobs, but I'm sure you all can picture them. Brass, rusted, squared edges, with nicks and scratches across the face. It's not really something you notice until you notice it. Then, you don't even want to use them because they're just so ugly. Or at least that's how my OCD mind works. Once I notice it, I MUST find a way to fix it or else it will no longer exist to me and will probably end up in the Goodwill box whether they want it or not.

So, here they are! Our beautiful new bronze doorknobs surrounded by an unattractive, outdated door.

Looking at these doors eventually drove me mad. So I started looking to buying new interior doors. At $100 a piece, that idea was immediately out the window. On to the DIY forums!

First, I found this ADORABLE post on Little Green Notebook for a bright yellow door.

http://littlegreennotebook.blogspot.com/2011/06/b-n-n-s.html

Too cute, right? But that look just wasn't right for our small, ranch home. We've decorated with a transitional style that lies somewhere between modern and traditional cottage, and our home is already filled with color. So colored doors were out.

Next, I came across the black-painted doors at A Well Dressed Home, and I was in LOVE.

http://awelldressedhome.com/1637-our-interior-doors-are-complete/

So I pulled out the sketch pad and drew up a plan for my own door:

I started with what looked normal for the bottom section of the door. 10" above the ground looked about right. Then for the side measurement, I went to the knob and measured to just inside of it landing on 4.5". Then I took a pencil and just started drawing on the door where I thought the molding should go, made a mock version on the Mixture app on my phone to take to the store in case I needed to glance at it, added all of the measurements, and off to Home Depot I go!

I found this fantastic little molding and debated for a moment whether I should get something larger. I decided I'd go with the smallest molding because it would look more properly scaled on the thin Entry Closet door that I was working on. I also made sure to get a shape that was rounded on both ends so that the molding would "flow" across the door per se. Here's what I ended up with:

http://www.homedepot.com/p/House-of-Fara-5-16-in-x-11-16-in-x-8-ft-Basswood-Panel-Moulding-244/100578841#.UheL-pKxeSo

I grabbed my little miter box, started measuring, and began cutting my pieces at 45 degree angles. I then wiped down the door with a lightly dampened paper towel and used Gorilla Wood Glue to glue the molding pieces along my drawn-on lines on the door.

Over in the paint section, I got samples of the two colors that jumped out at me first, and slapped them each on a section of the door to see which I preferred.

Looking around the room, I thought the lighter color would blend too much with the Behr Castle Path taupe that was already on the walls. So, I went with Valspar Italian Leather to give the doors some contrast and to create a more traditional look. I let the molding dry overnight so I wouldn't mess with the glue while painting, and then I used a paintbrush for the entire door.

I absolutely love the way it turned out. The door now looks like solid wood and the deep contrasting chocolate-type brown is just fabulous and really pulls in all of the bronze accents throughout the house.

Now that I've tested on this door, and I've seen just how ridiculously easy this project is, I'll be doing the rest of the doors in the house!

Here she is

Our kitchen.

She served her duty. The kitchen was originally designed and built in 1962. She had a refrigerator, teeny tiny wall oven, stove top, and a sink. No dishwasher. No microwave space. No counter space. No human space. The actual kitchen area was confined into this small U shape that could only contain one human at a time with a small counter-height opening looking into the former dining room/den.

This one-man layout always left me envisioning J's grandmother as a young mother in the 60's, wearing an apron over a dress with her black hair in tight curls around her loving face, pulling a cake out of the tiny oven that was baked to perfection on Christmas evening. Moments like that make me want to leave the kitchen exactly as it is and continue the tradition of this one family home. As sweet as that fleeting thought is, it's always followed by the much more realistic vision of her standing in the tiny kitchen, drenched in sweat because the layout doesn't allow for air flow. Then, after attempting to cook an enormous meal for the entire family in a half size oven, she is left washing mounds of dishes and silverware by hand and piling them on the teeny counter top next to the sink to dry.

http://flickrhivemind.net/User/Nava%20Atlas/Timeline

Renovation, here we come.

Our home

J and I bought our first home from his family, and the sale was rather bitter sweet.

J's grandmother had been getting a bit foggy. For a while, the family all took care of her in her home where she had lived for the last 50 years, and, for a while, that worked just fine. After that while, however, it stopped working. She was leaving the front door open through the night. She would wander across the street to the church and ask someone to call her grandson. She stopped eating because she couldn't see the food in front of her anymore. The family decided that the safest option for her would be to move her into an assisted living facility where she could be cared for and watched over. As many of you know from first hand experience, this was hard on everyone. Financially and emotionally, everyone was tired and worried - about everything. So, grandmother was feeling confused and wondering why she was no longer in her home - the home she had raised J's father and aunts in, the home built for her and her husband before he passed. J's father and sister began to realize that the house now sat empty, and they would have to sell it.

The house had not been updated in the last 50 years since grandmother was not much of a decorator, and the kids were all grown and had their own homes to worry about. This left them with the choices of going into the house and renovating/redecorating or just to sell the house exactly as it was and take the hit on the price. They decided to sell the home without any repairs because with jobs, homes, and families of their own, they simply didn't have the time. Once I heard details of the plan, I nudged J. We wandered through the house, and my mind absolutely raced with everything I envisioned us doing with it. So, we sat down with J's father and told him what we wanted. We wanted to buy the house exactly as it was and fix it up ourselves, and he loved it. The family was relieved that the home would stay in the family and that it would get the attention it needed without them having to give up all of their extra time.

Overall, we knew going in that we had a shit-ton of work ahead of us, but that it would be worth it. We also knew that we had finally found our first real home.

Before our first house

J and I have rented two condos together in the past.

Our first condo was a beautiful, brand new skybox condo uptown with a private rooftop that had a fantastic view of the city. We lived there with an awesome roommate, and after living there for a little less than a year, his current girlfriend moved in too. It. was. phenomenal.We stayed up on weekends drinking and playing cards, walking to bars near the condo, and throwing the kind of outrageous parties that you thought only existed in film-land. Eventually, our awesome roommate got a job offer in Florida, and the partying finally came to an end. He and his girlfriend moved away, and J and I found a more affordable condo for just the two of us.

We moved into an older condo neighborhood that consisted of mostly young professionals, young families with small kids, and retired folks who lived alone but still knew how to have a damn good time. The condos themselves were OLD AS DIRT. They were built in the 1940's (badass, right?) and while some of them were updated and absolutely fabulous, the one we found was, sadly, not. Not even close. However, this being our first place together alone, I was more than thrilled when the landlord said "Paint? Of course you can paint! In fact, you can do whatever you want to the place because you really can't make it worse." Trust me, he was not wrong. I spent the next year and a half making that condo our first home. After spending so much time and money fixing the place up and realizing that I didn't have ANY before & after photos, I decided that I would never make that mistake again. So, here is one of the very few photos we have of the cozy little living room in our last condo. Filled to the brim with hand me down furniture and hand-made wall art.

We loved this condo with almost all of our hearts. It was our first home, and the location was beyond fantastic. We were in a lovely little neighborhood, but that neighborhood was walking distance from a street full of bars, restaurants, and the newly renovated bowling alley. However, this condo had roaches like no other. The buildings were old, the trees surrounding the buildings were old, and the buildings insulation was poorly done which was painfully obvious as soon as the weather changed. For those reasons, we started looking for another place once we realized that we had about six months left of our year and a half lease.

We looked and looked and looked. We looked for six full months and at the very last minute, luck smiled upon us. We landed in our very first house.

This is us.

J and I met when we were young. So very young. I was fifteen and he was eighteen. Oh, the uninvited cautionary advice I received after revealing that lovely little factoid to anyone who asked. Despite everyone's best attempts to warn me that his age was the only factor I should consider, I just so happened to notice that he was also fun, passionate, supportive, and he adored me.

Friday, September 1st, 2006 - We met at a mutual friend's birthday party. As soon as I saw him, I just had to have him. I asked around and found out he was single, then I got his attention, or "hopped around him the rest of the night like a yappy chihuahua" (as he so lovingly tells it now).

Friday, September 8th, 2006 - I got his number from our mutual friend and invited him out to dinner with our group, so I could sit next to him. The night went from dinner to ice cream to my house where we played pool in the basement. My friend stayed the night, and J couldn't bring himself to leave until 2am. It was a hilarious and fantastical night. 

Friday, September 15th, 2006 - I invited him to a charity gala that I was attending with some friends, and when he picked me up, we found ourselves alone in his car as we drove over. As we talked, we realized that we had everything in common, and later in the night while we were dancing in our own little world at the edge of the floor, he asked me to be his. 

We've spent every waking moment together since.