Falling for Fall Colors

Among all the craptastic things Hurricane Matthew brought with him (fortunately not for us; we just had to survive five days without electricity), fall was the best. The days following the big storm have simply been beautiful: bright blue skies, lovely breezes, lower humidity, and - best of all - cool nights. Fall in Florida!

That's the time of the year I think my house loves best - its colors just belong into this season. Earthy fall colors to celebrate the Craftsman detail and lines on our house, warm and inviting. Picking those colors were a decision we did not regret one bit!

This past weekend I tackled a project which was delayed by Hurricane Matthew: painting the front door and touching up the paint job in those areas that were dedicated to our accent color (chocolate brown so we're looking at you crag stones and top rails).

After five years our front door is now a rich chocolate brown, and gosh, do I love it! It's one of those little projects you wish you'd tackled sooner. We loved the red, but it just didn't -reeeeally- go with the new color scheme (but life got so crazy it was one of those things that was easily pushed waaaaaay to the back burner).
An hour later, this is what the front looked like. It seriously reminds me of a chocolate bar, and it's just as delicious! Best husband ever doesn't quite get my excitement, but he does love it too.

And because we're slowly but surely approaching Halloween the front wreath got a little make-over too. Two sprigs of fake flowers from the dollar store, a pack of plastic eye balls, and some hot glue! Voila! Peekaboo, I We see you!

See-through no more

Not only is the big original entry door sans transom window in the wrong location (i.e. in the living room instead of the vestibule), it also came with an ugly, dirty and broken mini blind.

Just how to get rid of the mini blind without compromising our privacy? The big door opens to our front porch and to the street, and while the Loquat and crape myrtles provide ample privacy for most of the year, right now, things are looking a little bare. Add some light to that and voila, instant movie theater for the neighbors!

Sure they'd much prefer we do our private things in the privacy of our own four walls and encouraged by the success with window frosting in our master bathroom, I decided to frost the center panel.

First, it was bye-bye, nasty, broken mini blind! Good thing it was an early Sunday morning (I naturally wake up at the crack of dawn) and nobody was out and about to see me diy-ing in my pjs.

After a quick cleaning of the glass panel which gave me some time for idle thoughts and musings, I grabbed the tape on the husband's desk and taped off a quick, craftman-style inspired pattern for some quick and easy visual interest



All this happened under the watchful eyes of Ferb (as in "Phineas and Ferb"), one of our porch kittens. There are only two, Ferb and her little brother "Phineas", who have recently shown up on our porch. They look like Seamus's love children but he hasn't let us in on any family relations yet.


After the tape was in place, I went spraying. I've been using Valspar's Frosted Glass on two bathroom windows and now on the door, and there's still some left in the can. A-Ma-Zing!


After several coats I decided the frosting was thick enough for good privacy and applied as evenly as possible so it would look good.


Then it was time to remove the tape! It came off with no problems whatsoever and left beautifully crisp edges. I wouldn't recommend it for taping off on walls though. Hmm, then again the reusable tape might work just as well ....


Husband came down for breakfast and found a door with a new look along with a very-pleased-with-herself wife. While running rampant on all kinds of last-minute projects, we have been enjoying a brighter living room. Of course, now the dinged up molding around the doors is begging to be painted but I guess we're going to have some turkey first!

Changing season

Since Friday's post you know that I needed a pick-me up. What better reason to swing by the blue box to browse the gardening section for some little lovelies for my yard?

Lowe's did not disappoint. In fact, I ended up the kid in the candy store marveling at all the clearance and sales tags in the gardening section. Woot! Even the distressed plant shelf was nicely stocked!

Distressed plant shelf? Well, I don't know about your big home improvement stores but ours here occasionally seem to hire people with not so green thumbs. Thus they end up with a bunch of plants that look mighty disheveled and/or shriveled, and they sell these poor abused lifeforms for very little money. Like a 10th of the original price low. Not always do I end up taking one of these patients back home with me; my own thumbs aren't overly green and certain kinds of plants become death row candidates in my care.

Others, fortunately, do thrive and since the canna lilies I bought for $10 a pop a few weeks ago seem to love their spot and don't object to my care, I picked up 2 of their distressed cousins. Canna lilies grow from bulbs, so unless the bulbs are rotten to the core, they will come back next year! I also decided to take an electric blue salvia home with me and a few other things to pretty up the outside of the Ugly Duckling.

My little plant arrangement next to our entry door had gotten a bit out of control. I'd unknowingly bought a bleeding heart -vine- and it's a really enthusiastic grower! I had to cut it back on a weekly basis and so it always looked disheveled and out of shape (and bounds). It's not like our house needs any help looking disheveled - far from it - so it had to go.

[Before: Potted plant out of control!]

At the blue box, I picked up 3 little yellow Mums (nothing says "Fall is here" like blooming mums!) and splurged on a cute, 2-tiered topiary. Then I got down and dirty and started digging up the existing plants. Crazy growing bleeding heart was earmarked to go into the backyard, along with the potatoe vine, and unknown trailing plant no. 3 got to hang around with its new buddy, the topiary.

[In Progress: Diggin' in]

Out with the old and in with the new - switching up the planter didn't take that long and only half an hour later, our front porch and entry looked much much better!

[After: So much better! All nice and tidy]

Just wish me luck I'll be able to keep this pretty poofy topiary alive!

8 steps to front door happiness

When we bought the Ugly Duckling it more or less wore this title for a number of valid reasons. Not much had been done to pretty up our now Darling Duckling and as you can see, this was especially true when it came to the entry door situation

[Before: Brown door, dirty broken screen door - no love]

That's a a cropped screenshot made possibly by Google maps' street view. I was obviously too caught up in making things better to snap a Before picture of the door.

[In Progress]

After moving Griswold to his new location, installing outdoor lighting and removing the shoddy good-for-nothing screen door we painted the door

in Valpar's historic red (read about it here).

We also hooked up a vintage door bell button and removed the ...ahem, rusty drawer pull that served as door handle.

Husband did a ton of research and then presented me with a couple of options to choose from and with our newfound love for antique brass we settled on this Kwikset lock set here:

Thanks to the really hard wood, it was a bear to install but husband labored on and in the end he was victorious! This set is one of the few sets with a matching dead bolt and a lock. Most of the time you only get one or have to jerry-rig your own combination.

Of course this wouldn't be the Duckling if it weren't for some touching up. Woodfiller, then primer and finally 5 coats of red paint were needed to blend in the areas around the old lock and ... ahem, pull with the rest of the door.

[After: So much better]

There you have it: "8 steps to front door happiness"

- remove broken screen door
- paint door frame white
- paint door red
- move Griswold, the mailbox
- install door bell knob
- install new door lock and handle set
- add old planter with new plants
- add new door mat
- add door wreath

I see a red door and I want it painted black

After painting our front door a bright cheerful red to make sure guests will end up using the right door (and not the bigger original entry door), dear husband looked at me and asked one of those dreaded questions (the kind I don't necessarily have an answer for because, well, I hadn't had time to think about it yet):

"Are we going to paint the inside red, too?"

Err ... No, I don't think so ... that'd look odd and, you know, really set our color scheme for inside"

So we listened to the advice from the Rolling Stones, took our red (on the outside) door and painted it black (on the inside)

[Hey, good looking!]

It also took only 2 coats of semi gloss interior paint to achieve this beautiful rich slick black finish (as opposed to the red on the exterior: coat 5 and counting)

[painting in progress]

Together with the perfect shade of "greige" on the walls and white trim, our black door looks mighty sharp, we think.

Lipstick Chic

"I believe in manicures. I believe in overdressing.
I believe in primping at leisure and wearing lipstick."

Audrey Hepburn

Florida's early spring weather is fantastic and this past weekend I went on strike: no projects inside. Instead, I took my painting outside enjoying the beautiful weather while sprucing up the outside of our Ugly Duckling a bit.

The exterior color isn't that bad - a light blue-ish grey - but what brings it down is the combination with even drabber - more drab? - dark blue-grey as accent color. I was itching to paint the window and door trim outside a crisp clean white and decided to test my theory on the big original door on the front left of our house (stay tuned for pictures of this project).

Dear husband came back from a quick trip to the blue box loaded with paint and presented a can of Valspar's National Historic Preservation color line with a flourish: red for our entry door. He couldn't wait to get started. We scrubbed, patched with woodfiller, sanded and de-glossed the door before priming it.

Then we broke out the paint

[First daring brush strokes]

Holy Guacamole! What a COLOR!

The first coat turned our door smoking hot pink. Our little man screeched with horror "It's a girl door!!!" but fortunately, when I added coat 2 and 3, thanks to a sunny Monday things started to look up and a bit more like the paint chip.

[Much better!]

And here's our Darling Duckling with her freshly painted door.

Painting it red was a no-brainer for us - we simply like a red door and the color goes with the current color scheme - but of course I poked around online for a bit more info on why red is such a traditional color for an entry door.

Early American - American settlers would paint their doors red as sign that travelers were welcome.
Feng Shui - A red door supposedly draws positive energy into your house
Scotland - A red door signalizes a paid-off mortgage
Christianity - A red door symbolizes hallowed ground and is free from evil
Ireland - A red door would ward off evil spirits.

And on top of that, it's like lipstick for your house - look at the Duckling! What a babe!