turn around, i think that was a craftsman front door in the trash!

It totally was.


It won't fit our house, though--it's much too tall. But it WILL pay for our other new front door, after we fix it up and sell it. :)


And our other, side-of-the-road find (and somewhat anticlimactic, now) was this. A little bent, but perfectly fixable:

decatur old house fair

This sounds pretty cool. Check out the info below or click on the graphic to read more.


A day-long celebration featuring new ideas, practical advice, innovative materials and quality services for old-house owners.

Discover . . .New ideas, materials and techniques for rehabilitating, furnishing and maintaining your older home.

Shop . . .A large exhibit area of retailers, suppliers and other professionals in home improvement, historic preservation, renovation, interior furnishings and construction.

Learn . . .How to restore original windows, improve your older home’s energy efficiency, develop a maintenance plan, research old-house history, earn tax incentives for certified rehabilitation – and more – through seminars and hands-on demonstrations.

Tickets: $10 in advance; $15 at the door. Cash or check only.

lazy days update

Here are a couple of photos of our new front door. We haven't done a thing to it since we brought it home!



Updated photo of the wisteria of evil. It's run out of trellis, and hasn't quite decided if it wants to just take over the building next door or not.

This is one of Brandon's project chairs...or actually, two of them. I really like the placement though; set up like a conversation area, it's really two chairs that you can't sit in with a birdbath in between :)

Close up of the other chair project. I think this one is the rocker.

aren't you supposed to finish one project before you start another?

So we haven't finished painting the trim yet (half of the front gable is still tan, half is green), or painted the porch, or built the patio, or painted the rockers. But we did take on a few more projects...kind of like insurance...to make sure we never run out.

We spent the weekend putting up our new 2" wood blinds (Big Lots rocks!). The color, while not quite "red oak," is nice and they do match the floors pretty well. We removed two of the curtains in the living room and moved the two remaining ones to the ends of the rod. It seems to open the room up a bit and it doesn't look so cluttered. It's nice to be able to just flip the blinds closed or open and not have to move the curtains back and forth so much.

We also went back to Scott's this weekend looking for bargains. We found some but ended up spending quite a bit more than we'd planned. We found two old metal chairs for the yard that need a lot of scraping and painting and rebolting and, well, you get the picture...anyway, we got them both for $50 (price tagged $95 for the pair)...and one's a rocker! They're the same pattern, too, which is nice. We want one of the old gliders, but haven't found one that's cheap enough yet. I also picked up an old shelf for the half bath from the same seller. The shelf is old and has been repaired, and wasn't great quality, but it has a nice carved art deco flower at the top and very elegant lines. It looks like it might be handmade, too.

The biggest (and hopefully best) find of the day is...drumroll....a new front door! It's Craftsman style, comes with the shelf, and has a six-light window in the top. It's made out of cedar, which isn't terribly Craftsman, at least in Georgia, but will match our cedar shingles and mailbox post quite nicely. We have to install the glass and stain it, and prepare it for hanging (I think it's time to give my dad a call) but we will be rid of the modern monstrosity of a door we have now.

I'll post photos soon!

blogging is for posers

I've been looking forward to this book since reading about it on Houseblogs.net a few months ago. All the Way Home: Building a Family in a Falling-Down House by David Giffels finally came into the library this week and I grabbed it off the cart, toting it home hoping to find a kindred spirit in the DIY world. After reading about a third of the way into it, I not only fear that my husband is not unlike him in dangerous ways, but that we are total posers in our DIY pursuits. This guy had raccoons living in closets and large patches of sky visible from the "Master Bedroom," not to mention a previous owner who wouldn't leave. I look around my tidy, neat little bungalow and wonder if I have enough adventurous spirit to tackle a house like that...and secretly hope that I do. Do a Google search for lots of articles, or just get the book. Another post when I've finished reading...