Screen Door Upgrade!

Overdue Improvement!

Our screen door had been falling off its hinges since we bought our house:

Before

Before

Falling apart.

Decided it was time for a change.  The challenge was finding an exact replacement - apparently arch top doors are rare?  

After a few days (weeks) of searching, we settled on a company in California to build the replacement.   Send them the measurements you need, a pile of money, and get a sweet new door a month later.  What could go wrong?

New Stuff!

Door arrived in perfect condition, to the exact measurements we took.  We never considered that the house have settled around the entry and the opening was no longer square.  Rookie move, considering that in 4 years of tinkering we haven't encountered a straight line in this house.

So nothing fit.  This was the solution:

Taking 1/8" off a corner.

Shave down one corner of the door, one pass at a time.  Took about 20 min. but prevented a wrong cut with a saw, ruining our $500 investment.

Caulked seams, door shavings!

Cutting hinge mortises:

Another slightly stressful step in the process, although not quite as bad.  Came out alright considering we've done this three times in our lives.

Next came prime and paint.  Two coats of primer, three of exterior blue.  Make sure your new door doesn't rot away like the old one.

Primed

Finally matched the existing door / shutters.  Indigo Streamer!

Vintage hardware from the old house junkyard:

We could have spent all day at that place.  Literally acres of old sinks, doors, toilets, shutters, wood window sashes, etc.  Everything you'd ever want to restore an old home, and none of it organized.  Heaven.

Add the screen, install all hardware, and hang.  Side note:  The best way to remove decades of layered paint from old hinges, knobs, etc is to cook them overnight in a crock pot full of soapy water.  The next morning the paint will pull off like chewed gum and you can steel wool / polish / paint the clean metal.

End result:

We're still addressing the worn-out sill pictured above.  Small but gratifying project, for a later post...

New Mailbox Yo!

Another project from earlier this year.  We decided to stop punishing the mailman with the doors falling off our old boxes.

Before:

Literally rusting apart.

My architect brain thinks through everything in 3D before beginning projects.  I'll either know exactly what to buy and how to assemble it, or get bored with the idea and move on.

During:

Old boxes out really easy because they used a post spike to anchor it instead of concrete.  We were a little hesitant to use the spikes ourselves because it seemed like a shortcut.

Lesson learned: use the spikes.  We ended up going the easy route and never looked back.  We even reused the one in the ground from the old mailboxes.  Never even dug it up.

Setting the double posts and cross bars was tedious.  Everything was flexible, nothing was level / plumb, and there was no way to tell how all the parts would shift as we tightened everything.  It also doesn't help that I started eyeballing all my measurements and bolt holes.

Later that night:

Came home from the bar and decided to vandalize some property of the federal government:

To this day I have no idea what I painted (mine's on the left).

After:

Much needed improvement.

A Work In Progress

We're still getting the hang of our site!  Ignore the poor organization as we get set up.

Feel free to scroll a bit and check out our bio.  There will be tons more content in the following days as we post the last four years of work!

Josh & Steph

Apartment Entry

Some green and a broom go a long way.

Before:

This project was actually done in two phases. The first was the simple cleanup and planting above.  The second we just completed this spring:

Removal of the sunken field brick in the stoop.  Getting them out was fairly simple, since all the grout joints were broken and there was a void underneath that was never filled properly before the bricks were set.

The difficulty began with cleaning grout off the bricks one at a time so we could reuse them.  Takes a while with a hammer and chisel, and a few sore fingers.

Trying to give everything a real setting bed.  I really had no idea what I was doing, so I watched a handful of youtube videos and picked the points from each that seemed smart.

Afterwards we poured 4" of concrete over the crushed stone for the setting bed. Already having our form work in place sped things along.

This was actually a real pain- since we'd never done concrete work before, we decided to mix it by hand in a large plastic storage bin.  You get tired out in about 10 minutes doing it that way.

The next weekend we mixed a bit of mortar and set the bricks in place:

Another week, and we grouted between the bricks.  This was pretty challenging since we had to work fast so the mortar wouldn't set.  Using a putty knife to fill each joint individually is surprisingly tedious.  We probably had the mortar mixed wrong.  Whatever.

After:

Done!

Upstairs Bath

The Finish Line:

This 40 sq. ft. of space is where we spent 2/3 of our upstairs reno time and money. Here's why:

Before:

One of those bathrooms that you feel dirtier after using.

Demolition began promptly and took a few short hours.  It's incredible what you can accomplish with a hammer and flat bar.

During:

We salvaged the old double hung sashes, which now live in our garden shed.  Everything else went out the window onto the driveway below.  Side note: that day I learned you could remove an old toilet without dumping all the water in the bowl.  I was ready for it, but THAT would have sucked.

After:

Short version of what we did is as follows:

New tub

New subway tile surround w/ glass accent

New toilet

New privacy glass window

New floor tile and subfloor

Re-purposed pedestal sink from downstairs bath

New vanity sconce

I swear the yellow outlet and cover plate in the image below were replaced.

Upstairs Kitchen

The kitchen is cozy, and was the second most involved project in the upstairs renovation.  We kept the existing cabinets, sink, and backsplash tile but ditched the countertop and all appliances.

After:

Before:

The original stove was one of those dinosaur combo microwave things.  It was milled from a solid block of steel and was so heavy we had to chop it just to get it downstairs and out of the house.  

Side mystery:  during disassembly, the oven thermometer (guessing that's what it was - a rod into the oven connected by a wire to the electronics) would spark and self ignite.  Just sitting there.  Having been unplugged for months.  Who knew?  So that spent the rest of its life in the middle of our rear driveway.

During:

Painted the original face frames, drawers, and doors.  The uppers were wood, but the lowers were formica...  

So, this:

Glidden Gripper Primer

Worth a try if you need to paint something that hates paint.

Installing subfloor for new flooring.  The game plan was to pull up the old crap peel-n-stick and refinish the original wood floor.  Ditched that idea in about 4 minutes after realizing how much time and effort it would take to chip it all away, remove adhesive, refinish what was left, etc.

Alternatively, new VCT from Lowe's is hella cheap.  And installation is therapeutic.

After:

Reused a homeless light fixture from our old apartment and grabbed some stainless bar cab / drawer pulls off ebay for 1/3 what they cost elsewhere.  Fridge was a sweet scratch n dent find at Best Buy. Seriously, consider BB if you're shopping appliances and want to be pleasantly surprised.  Stove was moved from downstairs and painted black with Rustoleum appliance epoxy, the results of which were meh.  Some fresh paint on walls and trim, and kitchen was dunzo!