The Mailbox

Oh. Hi. Yes, I'm still alive. In fact, I'm just going to jump right into this post and pretend like I haven't skipped almost an entire year (!!!).

Here is our old mailbox. It was looking a little sad.

The old mailbox.

I decided to paint it (of course). I love it now! I used Rustoleum's oil-rubbed bronze spray paint on the mailbox and pure white (Behr's external paint) for the post. I was concerned about how it would hold up, since I haven't painted much that stays outside year-round, but it is still in perfect shape four months later. (We'll see how it does with a Midwestern winter, though!)

New and improved mailbox!

I bought three stainless steel buckets at an antique store and planted petunias in them (they're actually still mostly alive, even though it's October). Last fall, before painting, I put in the brick surround and planted tulips. When they died off in early spring, I added the buckets in their place.

Spring tulips.

I'm hoping the tulips come back this spring!

Front Door Paint Job

I got the biggest item already checked off my list for this weekend. On Friday, I painted our front door to match our new shutters. As you may remember from that post, the door was really ugly:

 

Here it is now with the new paint job:

It's not amazing (it's still a plain, six-panel door), but it does make a big difference on our little house. If you too need to paint a door (or anything else...) here are my tips from this project: 

1. For six-panel doors, it's always good to follow the directions (like Pretty Handy Girl's, here) instead of just painting the whole thing in a random order like I tried to do on the first coat. Things start to dry out of order and you risk pulling up partially dried paint otherwise (super hot weather made this even worse!).

2. Always read the product's instructions before you use it. I was using a Pittsburg Paint exterior product that was supposed to have "paint and primer in one." I read it in the store; it said it was OK for metal. No problem! Then, when I re-read it immediately before using it, it said to "prime metal surfaces with the appropriate primer before using." Oh. That brings us to tip #3...

3. Have lots and lots of tools/paint/brushes/stuff in your house. Seriously, deciding to prime the door at the last minute was no big deal, because I own at least four different types of primer. Yeah, I might have a problem. I ended up using a spray-on oil-based primer, which was awesome — it was easy and I didn't have to clean any brushes!

Probably the most hilarious part of this project was deciding how to take the door off to paint it, since I wanted to lay it flat across sawhorses in the garage while I worked. Leaving a gaping hole in the front of our house for 8 hours was a problem due to bugs, weather, cats, etc., and we currently have no storm door. We ended up taking the door off the back of the garage to put in its place, since it was 100+ degrees yesterday and I needed to keep the AC going. It was exactly the same size and color, so I'm not sure our neighbors even noticed. The hinges were on the wrong side, though, so we just pushed a recliner up against it (from the inside of the house) to hold it up. Somehow, it worked wonderfully!

Front Yard Makeover

This weekend we got lots of work done! In the front yard, we put up new house numbers over our garage door and added shutters on our front kitchen window. It's looking a lot different (to us) than when we first bought the house.

Here's a photo from right before we closed on our house, in September 2009:

 

And here it is today, August 2011:

 The shutters, exterior lights, trellises for the clematises, and house numbers really make a difference for us. The shutters were surprisingly easy to install. We followed the directions and had them up in under 15 minutes. Super easy!

 

I have a four-day weekend for Labor Day next weekend, since my company gives us Friday off as well as Monday (awesome!). This means I have lots and lots of plans... we'll see how many get finished. Number one on the priority list, though, is painting the front door — the same dark green color as the shutters. We already bought the paint, so I'm all set! We originally had a screen door on the front door too, but it was damaged beyond repair in a big storm this spring. But once we took it off, we realized how ugly and in need of TLC the front door was.

 

It probably wouldn't hurt to upgrade our welcome mat, either!

Coffee table refinishing

We've been busy with lots of projects lately, so I'm going to start doing more posts to keep up!

I recently decided to refinish the top of our coffee table. The cats had scratched it up pretty badly, and since we often eat on it (instead of our kitchen table), it had suffered a lot of abuse. Here's what it looked like before, courtesy of a December 2009 posting, when we had first started painting our walls:


I decided to go with a black stain for the top instead of trying to match the existing color. I chose Minwax ebony stain, and then used Minwax fast-drying polyurethane in satin for the topcoat (I actually did three coats on this, since I had only done two on the kitchen table and later wished I had all three). Here it is in the garage, waiting to come in:

It's nice to have it back in the family room now. We'll see how it holds up to kitty claws... Meanwhile, outside, the clematises that I planted last spring are really taking off this year:

It's really exciting to see everything I planted last year come back even stronger and healthier this year!

Happy Easter!

Sunday was Easter, and we hosted both of our families at our house, which was a blast! Lots of food, fun, and installing exterior lights. A future Easter tradition? (I don't think so...)

We had several pounds of leftover ham, but it was delicious, so I'm not complaining! Adam and I have been eating it for lunch every day at work. Mmmm...

In the interest of sharing a few more favorite recipes, our menu included the following:

Fig-and-Orange-Glazed Ham
Parmesan Scalloped Potatoes
Almond Green Beans
Arugula Salad
Pasta Salad
Grilled Zucchini and Squash
Deviled Eggs
Strawberry Shortcakes
Chocolate Trifle

After we finished eating, Adam and the dads went outside to install two exterior lights on either side of our garage door. We also needed to replace the light right outside our front door -- we had a big storm earlier this month, and our (former) storm door got pulled open in the wind, smashed into the light, and was completely broken. We're super grateful to our parents for helping us out with the new lights!

The new lights on the garage look like this:

And the front view with all three lights:

It's hard to photograph... looks way better in person!