Home improvements

I have been on a rampage with our house lately, addressing the issues that irk me the most or that have the greatest payoff.

First project: Our front door used to make me shiver because I loathed it so much. The carved squiggles, the leaded glass, the old brass kick plate, the 3M adhesive hook apparently stuck to the door to hold wreaths. The whole thing was ugly and dated, so I finally took matters into my own hands.

Here is the door that I started with (blech) at Halloween:

Here is my in-progress door after the wood filler/sanding and before the primer:

Here it is now. Better, right? Still the leaded glass, but I am happy with it:

Second project: Our basement guest room is also my office. Unfortunately, this is the only picture I snapped of the room before we worked on it. I took it as we were prepping to paint, so the bed is pulled away from the wall. It was a sad and ugly room: a suffocating salmon color, with beat-up oak trim and dings everywhere. I worked on a crappy MDF desk that Kyle and I shared, so it was covered with our collective papers, and didn't provide enough space to spread out. It was not an ideal work environment and felt very basement-like.

When my mom was here in December, she painted the trim in the room white. I followed her up by painting the walls a light grey. I also built a two-person desk out of douglas fir planks and 3 Ikea bookshelves. I stained the bed to match the dark wood of the desk, and hung all the pictures that had been languishing in our storage area. While we still don't have two chairs for the desk, this is a massive improvement to my work-from-home situation. I LOVE the lighter color of the room and I LOVE the 11 feet of horizontal space that the desk provides. I enjoy going downstairs to work now. It's also way more inviting for guests now, so come visit us!

Third project: I don't have a before photo of this project (home improvement blogger I am not), but this was a great transformation. I bought this sideboard for $30 at a garage sale in Seattle in 2006, and it was raw wood, unpainted, and stripped of the veneer finish. I loved the rough look of it, but Kyle always semi-seriously scoffed at it, mostly because the doors were coming off the hinges, the drawers stuck, and splinters poked out, threatening anyone who came near it. The dry Colorado air and the exploring hands and fingers of toddlers finally made me think that it was time to address this guy. So I painted it orange! I put some glaze on it after the paint to distress it a bit and also some wax to give it a nice sheen. I fixed the drawers and the hardware, and now it is officially a functional (and safe) piece of furniture. I am deeply proud of how this one turned out. Hurray for do-it-yourself home improvements.