While all that was going on

A side project we had going with the same team doing our addition was to give our existing main floor rooms a facelift. Two small details on the main level had been ones on our to-do list for a while.

D has been bothered by the fact that a few rooms on the main floor of our house have crown molding, which he really likes, while others do not. We made sure we added it to the sunroom when we had that remodel done, and he wanted to add it to the rest of the rooms too. And now the work crew was already tasked with matching the baseboard, door and window trim for the addition--so why not throw some crown molding in, too.

And I have forever wanted the doors in our house to match. Most of the first floor doors were plain doors, while the upstairs doors (and, randomly, the two closets in the guest room) had panels in them. The plain doors were beat-up and generally unattractive, and I'd occasionally try to find a handyman (what is the gender-neutral term for this? handy person does NOT sound right. maybe just a general contractor?) to install some, after doing some research to learn that door installation was no easy feat and not something we wanted to tackle ourselves. So while they were ordering custom doors for the addition (pocket doors, in that case), we added this to the pile.

You can guess this added up to a very expensive and very expansive side quest.

The molding:

A few "before" and "after" pictures in the two rooms we decided to trim: the office and the guest room:

The crown molding was wide enough to interfere with our existing air vent (which, as a reminder, had been above a window but is now above the entry into the new addition) so they sort of carved out a little niche for it. I...don't love it. But I didn't have any better ideas and we certainly weren't about to cut the ceiling and move the vent an inch just for this. And honestly, I really never look up and see it.

Taking a closer look at the line where the ceiling meets the wall also made me hyper-aware that we didn't always do a great job with painting the edge. Yet another thing that crown molding solves (well at least if that crown molding is pre-painted).

Take a moment to admire all those corners!

More corners, no molding:

With molding!

To give you an idea of how very disruptive this felt, here's a "during" picture. You can see the lovely molding going up but also how all the furniture is in the middle of the floor covered in a tarp (at one point, I needed to get something in one of the dresser drawers, so that was fun).

In the end, we're very happy with the look. It makes the house feel more consistent across rooms. Much like with the doors, which now also all match. Onwards!

The new doors arrived, all custom ordered. And of course since we have an old house, each door had its own unique fit issues they had to deal with on-site. In total, we swapped out 6 doors (three doors off the hallway for the bathroom, guest bedroom, and office; the pantry closet; the bathroom closet; and the office closet). 

We got new doorknobs too, since the old ones weren't worth salvaging. Many had paint all over them and they felt light and cheap. We went with Schlage knobs, and the bedroom and bathroom ones have a lock on them. We have a few more to install, actually, in the doors that we did not replace. But that's a post for a different time.

Here's the teeny pantry door that is so narrow, it only became a three-panel door.

And here it is now! It's a heavier door (we didn't get fully solid doors, but we were upsold on a slightly heftier model from our original choice and we couldn't be happier--they're the perfect weight).

Here's the "before" view of our bathroom and office doors. You can see that they're not bad, but they are very plain. These doors were wood, so that was nice, but they were hollow and light and pretty beat-up. I felt that swapping them out was no huge loss to our home.

And here it is now. I think the panels look a lot better.

This picture above does depict how we did not quite get the right white. The white is Chantilly Lace, described as a "go-to" white, a decision supported by many blogs we had read in advance when trying to pick the best white for our addition trim (in semi-gloss) and hallway (no record of which finish we decided on and they didn't leave us extra, ugh). We were wary of "warm" white (whites with yellow undertones) since our home is all grays and blues. But yes, this white turned out to be quite white. TOO white. And yes, our new addition hallway is VERY bright. It showed us that most of the things we thought were white were actually white with yellow undertones. Oops. This is noticeable next to our IKEA liquor cabinets in the kitchen and in our main floor bathroom too. It's also doing our dingy towels no favors.

Nonetheless, we are happy with the result. The doors feel solid and look much better. The trim classes the house up a bit more. They had both been on our to-do list for a long time and we had just lacked the ability to find someone to do the upgrade. (Once we even came close, with a handshake deal that fell through.) So it feels good to have this done.

Where to begin again...

Posts have been few and far between due to other priorities (knitting, anyone?), life events, and well, because we've been too busy doing things in our home to record them. But we have some big things on the horizon so I might as well catch up with the smaller things over the next few months and try to build some momentum so...hi. We're back.

It's growing season, so as any regular reader will know, it's time for a lawn and garden catch-up. But let's talk about some of the hardware on the way to the outside first. Last fall, we updated some fixtures that put the finishing touches on our siding refresh from spring. Our outdoor lights in the front seemed like they were probably from a discount value pack several decades ago. It was definitely time to swap them out for some curb appeal. The post itself also needed some refresh--it was showing signs of rusting at the top and bottom. I've spray painted it one already, probably almost 10 years ago now (but somehow I couldn't find a post for it when I looked), so that held up pretty well:

After a quick sand-down to remove some of the rust and a wipe with a damp clothed, I went to work applying a few thin coats:

More dramatically, D tackled the electrical work, replacing the topper with one made of clear glass and an Edison bulb (the kind with the exposed filament, a style we've turned to multiple times before, and which you will see again in a future post). This is actually the second post topper, as we originally bought one that was much too high and out of proportion with the rest of the lamp post.

Of course the rest had to be replaced to match! The lamp right next to the door came next:

As always, a mass of old, deteriorating wires greeted us. Nothing too surprising though, so we just proceeded with the new fixture.

Tah-dah! But wait, there's more!

We forgot to get a "before" picture for the light over the garage, but it was similar to the other two, with the plastic shade and black construction. The wires were less deteriorated than next to the front door, but just barely.

Now we have three lovely, matching exterior lights (though the lack of a more sealed-off receptacle does mean things get a little dusty inside).

Coincidentally with all that, our front door hardware abruptly failed one day, almost locking us out. It wasn't the Schlage auto-lock that died (which you might expect, given that it has a battery and small computer) but the mechanism in the doorknob itself that pulls back the latch bolt. It failed pretty spectacularly--D had to uninstall it immediately just so we could get in and out, so it became important that we replace it immediately (the dead bolt still worked independently, fortunately).

Once we went looking, we wondered why we hadn't replaced it sooner. All our front door hardware is brushed nickel, including the storm door handle and our smart lock, and yet we had inherited this oil-rubbed bronze pull (oddly paired with a nickel doorknob on the inside). Why had we kept it so long? I guess it simply wasn't something we had thought of. But the new fixture (on the right) is so much prettier.

Even better, we replaced the slippery inside knob with a lever. This works better for so many reasons! Easier for Grandma (arthritis), me (hand lotion and mittens/gloves), and the kids (tiny hands). Yet another thing we never really considered replacing and yet made a big difference. 

It took one extra try to get right--we were so un-used to levers that we selected the wrong one at first, and had to reinstall the second one that came in the box when we realized which way the lever is supposed to swoop:

And because this is the house of a knitter, it seemed like a good time to upgrade our door wreath too (partly because the UV effects on the old one made all the plastic so brittle it left piles on our floor every time we opened the door):

The lights and handle weren't cheap, but they weren't expensive either. One of those things that can make a big impact in tiny details that seem so obvious afterwards.

Next time, stay tuned for a big yard update as I try to get back in the swing of things.

Ring! Ring! ...Hello?

In a few weeks, my doorbell will have been dead for 3 years. It doesn't seem like something worth keeping track of, but I miss it. I miss it every time I have to replace the piece of tape I put on top to discourage people from pressing the bell and waiting, assuming that we are on our way. I miss it in the evening when I come home and there's no little orange glowing button. I miss it every time I have to text or email someone: "Just knock, because the doorbell doesn't work."

Well no more. After 3 years of not wanting to pay for an electrician to come rewire it, we decided to take a different approach. We paid Jeff Bezos to fix the problem instead, recently adding a ring to our ever-increasing amount of Amazon products in our lives (we're not happy about it, but we've come to love our lord and master).

We'd been waffling for about a year on it (in part because of our reluctance to buy more Amazon products) but after seeing one at a friend's house, we decided it was the cheapest, easiest solution to my sad doorbell problem. And it was incredibly quick. D and the girls even managed to install it in the rain in about a half hour (it probably would have been quicker without the "help" of small children). The kit included an adorably small level and several inserts to angle the device. We didn't end up needing to tilt it, screwing it directly into the door frame. The only question really was whether to use the gray metallic faceplate or the black one.

We chose the black face plate instead of the gray metallic one since at least it matches our shutters. It is linked to our echo to tell us when "someone is at the door" and offers some motion detection as well, which is nice for when a package goes missing or to make sure the cat sitter remembered to pay us a visit. Most important for me, it makes an audible chime for the person at the other end pressing the doorbell. It's the little things, I guess. The kids find it hilarious and love to ring it every time they come in. We get a fun video on our phones.

Despite this unneeded extra use, we've been impressed with the battery life so far (you can hardwire it in but our original problem was that we don't have electricity to the doorbell). It's not totally flush with our door frame because it was a bit wider than the space between the trim, but it looks great. From above, you can still get a peek at our sad little doorbell. But at least now it isn't confusing visitors.

Insert Funny Joke About Stripping Here

I could have come up with a clever title, but on this minimal amount of sleep, I'm just impressed I'm posting an update at all. Now that our garage door is pretty, it was time to put new weather-stripping on the bottom. Even though the garage isn't climate controlled, it shares a wall with a room that is, so might as well keep out as much outside air as possible. Plus whatever animals might be sneaking in under the door (as opposed to lots of other ways they probably find to come in). The old one was cracked and starting to fall off--

 The nails holding the strips in place seemed unnecessarily gigantic.

 About 12 nails later, the old weather strip was off!

And within about a half hour (helped by a second pair of hands),  ta-dah! It's so pretty! Time for the animals to find a new way to sneak into the garage.

Dead as a Door...bell

Can you tell the difference between these two pictures? It's more obvious in person:

On the top, our doorbells is glowing. On the bottom, it isn't.

Right around when we were getting the electrical work redone for our new room, our doorbell stopped working. There had been a short - the crew admitted to that. Though they didn't think the two were related.

Well whatever it was, we now have no electrical power to the doorbell, which had magically just worked, emitting a constant glow and chiming an actual manual bell.

Our electrician friend managed to get it working partially - one of the two bell tones seemed permanently fried but the other started working  if the whole unit was loaded up with C batteries. So we got a "ding" instead of a "ding dong." That seemed a decent fix.

 The problem was that it was short-lived. Within a week or two, the doorbell was dead again.

Apparently the constant glow sucks up 4 C batteries in about 10 days. Obviously not something we wanted to sustain.

So we're back to no doorbell. This has not been a bad thing what with a newborn napping at various points of the day. But because it's there and people expect it to work, it has also meant that we haven't always answered for people we actually want to see, like our neighbors (by now I think most of them know it's broken). I probably at least should put a little sign on it or a piece of tape.

The options now are to purchase a fake add-on bell or pay an electrician to fix it, which might involve a whole new unit and new wiring. Neither are great solutions. Since the builders for the new room denied it was related even then, I don't think we can convince them now to come fix it, so we are on our own for whatever costly solution we decide on.

But I miss that glow...

Breezeway 3: electrical, HVAC, and masonry

This week, as we suspected, the big work slowed down so progress looks less dramatic. But some critical infrastructure got put in and we are definitely seeing things come together.

First - the electrician came and wired us up! Nothing is live, but they fed the lines into the basement where they are ready to be linked up to the circuit breaker box. Here are outlets, switches, and (in the next photo) the recessed lighting:

 Here's the wiring to the back patio:

And here's the line to the basement, complete with giant hole in the floor:

You may have noticed in picture one that we also have a fancy new garage door (beat the plywood board from last week. The mason came to remove the brick work and raise the door up the level of the future floors Here's the view from inside the garage:

They made progress on the front wall too, installing the Hardiboard and starting to do some of the decorative work that will make the wall blend into the rest of the house's style. In addition, they pulled up the big slate squares that led to the now defunct entry AND pulled out our mailbox, since the placement doesn't make any sense now without a door there (even if a future owner potentially uses the garage, it still seemed odd to have a post mailbox right there near the house - it would make more sense at the end of the driveway).

Our mailbox is currently hilariously propped up beside our front door (it's on the other side of the door now, but this is a good view of the gigantic post):

We need to decide on a new mailbox. We are leaning towards some kind of wall-mount one right below the entry light on the brick, like this one from Home Depot:

Any opinions, pros, or cons? We could definitely use some suggestions here. No door slots, as we like our front door. Having some security (like this model) is nice, but then we're forced to use a key every time to get the mail out (recall that we don't even use a key to get into the house anymore, thanks to keypad entry).

Finally, onto HVAC. Today the AC people came and hooked up our vents. We have an intake/return (this one here) and two vents - one at each end of the room. This room, while not fully insulated, is now officially "conditioned."

Earlier this week, our heating guy came and put in hot water pipes from our heating unit up to where the baseboard will be installed once the drywall is in.

Stay tuned for the next exciting installment. In the meantime, tell me your mailbox ideas!