Painting Interior Doors

For the longest time, I have admired houses with dark doors. Was I brave enough to dip my brush in black paint and tackle all the doors in this house, though? Why yes, I was. I know everyone thought I was crazy at first, but the dark, rich color brings an element of interest and an upgraded look I am really in love with. Paneled doors are easy to paint if you develop a system. Thankfully, Pinterest has lots of hints on how to successfully paint paneled doors, as well as brilliant tips about painting them on or off the hinges. 

I chose to remove most of the doors and paint them in the garage. I did this for a few reasons - 1) it is the best way to avoid drips, 2) I didn't have to worry about cats or dogs rubbing up against wet paint, and 3) it allowed me to easily work on a few doors at a time.

For the front door, french doors and pantry doors, I chose to leave those hanging and developed a system of painting the removed doors in the garage and while those were drying, I went inside to paint the doors that were still hanging. 

The difference is amazing! 

Summer Grilling

Several years back, we installed a deck, outdoor kitchen and a pergola in the backyard, near the pool. The Arizona sun was very unkind to the stain on the grill surround, and the top was beginning to warp and rot. Note to self, never use wood as the top to the outdoor kitchen counters. After looking at several pictures and watching a few tutorials, I felt confidant enough to replace the wood with tile. And off I went, shopping. After looking at a few options, I decided on Tavolo tiles - so pretty and colorful - and drove to a local mercado with one of the boys and we picked out the tiles. 

When we had the pool built, we carefully planned the pool around both of the trees in our backyard, hoping that neither would be damaged in the construction. Both trees suffered root shock from the digging of the pool, and although our Shamel Ash tree flourished this year, our Brazilian Pepper tree withered away to nothing. We decided to remove the tree and create a dining space in its place. On a scale of 1 to 10 in difficulty, this was about a 3 - the roots had obviously been damaged so extensively, the tree was pretty easy to remove. 

After removing the tree, we put more pavers down and set up our dining set. If you look closely, you can see our makeshift attempt at trying to level out the table. Since our yard slopes down out to the back of the property, we knew we would have to reset the pavers soon. In both of these pictures, you can see the condition of the wood of the outdoor kitchen. One trip to Home Depot and I had this solved.

After restaining and sealing the wood, I moved on to removing the rotting counters and replacing with cement backboard. I watched a few more tutorials and quickly got the hang of tiling. The grouting was the messiest part of the project, but overall, it was fairly simple. We are ready for some summer parties!

Gaining Space...

Back when the kids were little, the challenge of finding space for everything was a daily battle. We seemed to have legos, action figures and, remote control cars stored in every nook and cranny in the house. Now that the boys are older, "toys" are getting bigger, and we simply have more stuff.  We find ourselves looking for more storage space again. 

Building a fence between our property and the neighbors seemed like a great solution. Not only would we gain some privacy for the boys' bedroom windows - the homebuilder clearly wasn't thinking when he designed a set of bedroom windows DIRECTLY across from another set of bedroom windows, but we would also gain some valuable storage space for bikes, kayaks, and such. 

After weeks of waiting for a permit, and reviewing all our options, we decided on the vinyl fencing from the local Lowes. While it was a bit more than wood, the vinyl lasts much longer, won't need much maintenance, and won't be susceptible to termites, dry rot, etc. 

Dear hubby estimated two or three weekends for the project, and he was spot on. One weekend of digging for the fence posts proved to be insufficient, even with the aid of a rental auger and jackhammer. And to think, I set out to dig the holes with a fencepost digger - Arizona 'caliche' dirt is nearly impossible to penetrate without the aid of an auger. 

After several small mishaps and re-digging some of the holes, we finally started to see the fence taking shape. 

At the end of day two, we were all tired and needed a rest. We closed up shop for the weekend and planned for weekend two of more digging, and filling the post holes with concrete. On our second round with the tool rental, we managed to get an auger that didn't have enough power, so we resorted to using the jackhammer to cut through the dirt and make the remaining post holes. At the end of day four, we had a fence!

The last part of the project was installing the artificial turf, and removing the old gate. This proved to be far easier than we anticipated - thank goodness! 

Now, on to the next project!