Odd Inspiration

We finally got around to something that was on our notional to-do list for a few years - paint the front door. The black was a faded dingy not-so-black. And the dark color trapped so much heat between the storm door that opening it in even a 65 degree sunny day was a blast from a furnace.

I've taken many walks around the neighborhood to try to find inspiration but never could settle on a color. And I recently found my inspiration in the oddest place:

A cute outfit I bought my baby last weekend in the loveliest soft blue-green immediately made me think of what a beautiful color it would be for our front door. And this weekend was the perfect time to do it - warm and cool enough that we could keep the door open and dry enough that we wouldn't have to deal with humidity slowing down the time between coats. 

So armed with a pair of 3-6 month-old pants, I set off off the paint store. We usually stick to Sherwin Williams but a few blogs I read recommended Benjamin Moore, so we decided to try them instead. I purchased a quart of Aura for exteriors after the woman at the store told me that, even though I was painting a light color on black, it was guaranteed to cover in two coats with no primer. Also bucking our usual policy of buying a few sample colors, I compared a few of the paint tiles and picked a color within 5 minutes. Can you guess which?

I went for the second tile from the left on the bottom strip, Sea Mist Green. I almost chickened out and went for the more muted, grayer Covington Blue (top right) but decided against it.

Meanwhile, D was busy removing the hardware from the door:

You can see how much the black had faded from where it was covered by the door pull:

And so the painting began. Since I usually do the jobs that requires a brush and a steady hand, D watched the baby and assisted (and took photos) while I did the work. First, cut in and fill in the panels, doing my best not to create drips:

Then the inner cross beams and then the outside. Here it is after one coat - they were not kidding when they said Aura would be able to cover up the black.

Here it is all finished the next morning with the hardware back on (even though we could recoat a within a half hour - we waited until just before bed to put the hardware back on to really let the paint dry).

The only problem is that whoever painted the door black painted the inside edge of the hinge side black as well:

See it there, with a little of the new aqua where I let the brush go around the corner?

I was planning to use a little artist's paint brush there to cover the black today, but we realized it might look weird with a little strip of aqua paint visible on the inside of the house - the black mostly looks like a dark shadow. Ideally this edge would be white, but we don't have the original white paint used on the door and we learned once before that getting the "right" shade of white is important. So we're just going to leave it black for now until/if we paint the white door and all the trim.

And so ta-dah - here's our cheery door, all for only $25 of paint and a couple hours of effort:

Our New Science Oven

Thank you, American Hustle*, for giving me a new name for our fancy new microwave. When our last "science oven" broke, we wasted no time in hunting for a new one. We did continue to use it, opening and shutting the door carefully and trying to not stand too close or directly in front. But obviously that was a very short-term solution. The following weekend, we went out to a local appliance store to see what they had (the same day, actually, that we went to see American Hustle - one has to take advantage of a baby-free day out).

We discovered right away that we did not like the fancy new dial wheel interface. So the trip was worth it just to find that out. We are apparently old fogies that want a good old fashioned number pad (much easier to enter higher numbers in than spin to them, and let's face it - if I wanted to defrost something I would just set it to 5-10 minutes on medium power and not use the fancy auto settings). The problem was that the nicer microwaves had the wheel and so we were stuck with the basic ones without bells and whistles in other areas like fancy enamel interior and powerful vent fan. After consulting with the salesman, we also decided against a convention oven because we have a convection toaster oven and it just didn't seem worth the extra price. We've done just fine without convection for years.It was $200 to deliver and install, otherwise we would have to pick it up at the store when it came in. Not too bad, but we wanted to check our other options.

It was immediately evident that Home Depot had better options. I wanted to support a smaller store but they just could not compete. We ended up choosing a GE one, PVM9195DFBB, that met everything we were looking for - easy-clean enamel interior (an upgrade from our last microwave), number pad, 4 vent fan speeds (we couldn't find how many cubic feet per minute our old microwave vented, unfortunately, so we couldn't use that to compare and just looked for a slightly higher number, 400 cfm on the one we chose vs. 300 cfm on the basic-level model). It was, of course, more money than the one we would have chosen at the local place, but that was because at the local store we would have picked the one without enamel interior, smaller interior space, and less-powerful fan simply to have the number pad.

The icing on the cake - free delivery to the house OR $100 for full install. Yes please.

And so today was the big day and paying for installation was so worth it. Two professional guys who actually knew what they were doing took about 45 minutes from start to finish, so imagine how long it would have taken us. Step one, pull out the old microwave:

It was a trusty appliance that, according to the manufacture date, was installed in 2002 or 2003, so it lived a good long life. A Whirlpool something or other that seemed to have next-to-no online presence.

 Then they removed the mounts:

Unpacked the new microwave and installed the new mounts:

 And then put in the new one:

 Ta-dah! They even set the clock and tested the fan and light.

See the pretty enamel interior? It's supposed to be much easier to clean and scratch-resistant than the standard white interior. And failing that, the darker color will make it harder to see the gunk.

The fan sounds more powerful but the vent intake is smaller, so that isn't great. None of the pictures online had a picture from this angle. But hopefully the (at least seemingly) more powerful fan will compensate.

*American Hustle clip drops an f-bomb or two, just so you know.