Shut the Front Door

Exterior paint colors are my nemesis. My kryptonite if you will.

You need anything selected beyond your front door and I'm in, but if what you need falls on the exterior of your walls, I'm always at a loss.

Plants, colors, etc. I just don't see an exterior vision like I can an interior.

Don't get me wrong. I know what looks good and what looks bad. I just struggle on the process to get mine into the good category.

The front door was in pretty rough shape when we bought the house. For one it was painted red. A red door on a red brick house. Blah. Two, whoever painted it last did it with their eyes shut with no prep.

We changed out the lock set and hardware and by the time we did all of that the door was looking pretty rough.

But I needed to get a paint color selected and kind of in a hurry. I wanted to get the door cleaned up and painted before the weather turned too cool. But picking the front door color was going to be a lot of pressure.

I went through my paint box and picked out the first 12 colors that stood out to me. Knowing that I'd be narrowing it down to 3 by the time I got to the house and held them against the brick.

Before we took them out to the house, I Photoshopped some of the colors onto a photo we had of the front entry. The decision wasn't any easier.

Paul categorized four of them in the "no-way" category. Four of them in the "that could work category" and the last four into a "I could totally go for that category".

One morning before work, while Paul was breaking into our own garage (because we're totally classy like that), I taped some of the paint swatches up on the door thinking I'd immediately get it down to a smaller number.

I knocked one out of the running immediately but was still left with 11 options.

We went to work for the day, and when we came back by at 5:00 to check the mail, we did actually whittle it down. To 6 options. So, not really any closer to a decision. 

We sat on it for the evening, then narrowed it down to 4 options and bought some testers. We knocked out the top purple and the bottom blue. We were left with a deep purple, a blue green, a dark gray/blue/black and a light gray.

All of the colors were a little "safer" than I wanted to go with. I like a really well thought out colored front door. But most houses I see with a great color door have painted lapboard, or painted brick. Our Oklahoma red brick really forced our door color direction.

By the glow of a construction light we painted our swatches on the door. At night. I was so impatient.

Turns out, you can't pick a paint color in the dark. After standing in the cold Oklahoma wind wearing a dress, in my yard, on my sidewalk, in the street and in the neighbors driveway we were no closer to picking a color. 

The next day, we looked it over and decided the sweatshirt my mother-in-law was wearing was going to be the color instead. The next morning we bought a gallon of paint to match her sweatshirt, without testing it first. This is how this family rolls.

We decided on a back up color (a safe color) just in case after we painted the door we hated it, we could cough up another $40 and repaint it. The backup is the top right color, Sherwin Williams' Peppercorn.

After removing the solid wood door (cough, heavy, cough) and trying to strip off the existing paint, we realized we'd be at it for hours. Maybe even multiple days. So we stripped all of the cracked and peeling paint then sanded it down with a very coarse grit sandpaper with our hand sander. Putting the door back on was quite the show. Five adults and one door with a toddler watching very impatiently. 

 

After it was back up and we determined we were leaving it up for the rest of it's life, Paul took a tub of wood putty and applied it, liberally, all over the door to fill in all of the 1/8" divots and missing paint. After allowing it to dry for 24 hours, he took the sander and smoothed out the entire door so we'd have a flush even surface to paint. We also removed the existing dinky little doorbell in preparation for a legit one that we'll be able to hear past the first 18" of the house. Please excuse the crooked iPhone photos. I seem to be snapping these in the mornings before work so I'm always rushed.

 

 

Then it rained. Could there be anything more irritating than rain when you are ready to paint!?

 

After it dried out, it was time. Cue the color by Glidden called Totally Teal. 

 

 

Whoa, right? We are actually fans of Behr's 2-in-1 Ultra Exterior Semi-Gloss paint. We have never had to prime while using it even when painting over scotch tape yellow and deep dining room red so we had the Glidden color matched for the Behr paint. This door however did need a second coat. The grain of the wood on the front door had enough red paint in it to require a solid second coat. And the back of the door which was white took the paint completely differently than the front (almost worse). But, it wasn't difficult to get it on and the coverage went quickly.

We decided to paint both the exterior and interior side of the door the same color. It is one of the colors in the fabric I am using in the dining room that is tying this whole puppy together so we wanted to be able to see it's happiness from inside the house.

The color seems to be out of place right now. But once we get the landscaping taken care of it'll be perfect. Now if only we can decide whether or not to paint all of the exterior doors this color we'll be set.

Still up for the door: Paint the brackets a fresh coat of black with some Rustoleum to look as fresh as the railing, re-attach the weather stripping and get the sticker off of the lead glass window.

Exterior Updates

Our parents have seriously been helping us out over the past week.

My parents came into town and helped us clear about 20 yards of debris out of the house and into a dumpster. Dumping plaster from a second story window can be quite fun.

Shortly after they headed back to Texas, Paul's parents came down from Michigan for the week. While we were at work, they worked on tasks around the house, we'd have dinner and then depending on the evening we'd go and do a couple more tasks.

They dug up plants and over grown shrubs. They mowed our yard. They took steel brushes and steel wool to our railing in preparation for a new coat of paint. We stripped and sanded down the front door. I painted 2/3rds of the front porch railing.

We couldn't believe how much of a difference removing the shrubs and painting the railing made. Paul said having the exterior cleaned up is a moral boost for him. I agree. It's starting to become a totally different house while not changing at all.

We cannot thank our friends and family enough for helping us over the last few months. All of the labor and babysitting has been incredibly helpful and encouraging. But...keep it coming (hah!). Just a few more months and we promise we'll only invite you over to cook for your family or to watch your children instead!

26/328 = 13%

We have windows.

40 of them. Four zero. That is a whole lot of windows.

That translates to 328+ panes of glass including doors and all of our 6/1 and 4/4 windows.

26 of those panes were cracked, broken, chipped, or missing entirely. Which seems like a lot until you compare it to the number of total panes on the house. That's only 13% of all the window panes that needed to be replaced.

That's plywood in the left window. One of the small panes around the corner was missing and had the same plywood treatment.

That will make you feel good about the property you bought, right? I mean, nothing says home like some boarded up windows.

Well thanks to the Oklahoma weather (hail), glazing contractors have been IMPOSSIBLE to find. We had multiple recommendations but no one would take our job. Not only would they not take our job, they wouldn't even consider our job. Not because of anything that had to do with the house, but because their backlogs of work were so outrageously long, they knew it wasn't even worth taking down our number because of the time it would take to just get around to us.

"But we would pay cash. This was not an insurance job. You wouldn't have to file paperwork, or wait for a check. We could pay you at the time of service. What is wrong with you contractors?!"

Didn't seem to matter.

We did get the name of a guy who specialized in historic preservation. He came out took a look, and didn't have the desire to replace just the glazing. He wanted to restore the windows. To their former glory. Make them operational (using the old weights) and beautiful again. Wow. Wouldn't that be awesome? For more than $30,000, it wasn't all that awesome. Needless to say we told him to find himself another job.

So, we finally got someone worked out. They were still quite a few weeks out from being able to do the work, but they were willing to take our job. They are a general residential and commercial small contractor from Tulsa, so they are still quite busy, but not as slammed as the local Oklahoma City glazing crews.

So after waiting for them to have some availability, they came out last week and promptly started replacing the broken and missing glass.

Compared to the existing glass in the windows, the new glass is so clean you can barely tell there is a window there at all. I'll be spending the next three months doing nothing but cleaning paint and crap off the rest of the windows to make them even look half as clean as the new panes.

Last Friday, I cut their final check and I was a happy camper. I had windows that were no longer broken and the plywood was a thing of the past! Happy, happy.

The installers are coming back today to take care of a few things that accidentally got missed. I'm thankful for honest subcontractors that are willing to come back and fix things when an accidental oversight might have been made. It is rare to find these types of subs (unfortunately) so its good to keep the ones you do find.

Little Surprises

A few days ago, after work, we swung by the house to make sure that our front yard and back yard had been edged and mowed.

We pulled up in the driveway, did a quick survey and started to back out when I caught a glimpse of something on the front porch. I don't know how I saw it from the car but I made Paul stop, I hopped out and went to investigate.

What I found when I got to the porch was this:

Someone had anonymously left us this book, propped open to our house. What a thoughtful and sweet surprise.

I flipped through it on our way back to the apartment and loved seeing all of the old photos of the homes. I especially loved seeing ours. We determined the photo had to have been taken in the 60's since a window air-conditioning unit is front and center. But look at that baby maple in the front yard.

That's one of the two that we just had to cut down. We plan to plant some new trees and I have a good feeling we can get some big ole trees grown in no time now.

Once we got to the apartment, Paul changed, grabbed some water and headed back to the house to do some work. When he got back to the house there was another book. The same one, laying on the same doors. Either I was so focused on the one propped open that I didn't notice the 2nd copy or someone left us another copy. Either way, we now have two.

So, to the person or persons who left us these books, thank you. After the stress of the previous thoughts, it's nice to see that other people are excited about what we are doing.

Lessons Learned

At work we have this phrase we throw around constantly...

"Lessons Learned."

Every project something happens (a.k.a. mistakes), we learn our lesson and implement different directions on future projects.

We even have full meetings devoted to Lessons Learned topics. Everyone has at least one. Some have hundreds (slowly raises her hand in the air).

Well now, Six Twelve has one (or maybe twenty) and there will probably be plenty more by the time we are done.

Lessons Learned #1: Dumpsters

We ordered our 3rd dumpster this week. We had budgeted for construction dumpsters but not three of them. When we determined we needed another dumpster we decided this one was coming out of our pocket. We had already used our alloted money from our house budget and we didn't want to take away from other important items. Our family budget would be the one that would take the third dumpster's financial hit.

So, I became a price junky. I wanted to make sure that we got the biggest dumpster available at the cheapest price and for the longest time. This was eating into my furniture/decorating funds here. We were going to get a better deal.

Previously we used what we would consider the most well known dumpster company, Waste Management. They have the best marketing out of all the companies in town and it was the easy, order-online choice.

I (of course) created an Excel sheet to compare prices, terms, fees, etc., this time.

We found a cheaper company than the one we had used the first two times. By about $60. So we called them up, placed the order and scheduled delivery for today.

We met the plumber at the house this morning that is taking care of our gas lines and there was our third dumpster. From the same company the first two dumpsters were from.

SUCK.

We could have saved another $120 if we had just gone through this other "middle-man" company first. Same dumpster as before, same pick up as before, but we get it longer without extra fees and the base price was even cheaper.

So, if you're in the market for a temporary construction dumpster, tell us and we'll give you the steps for a cheaper but identical product.

Lesson learned.