Mondays, A Back Door, And A Little Peek

TGI....ummmm, M?

Merry Monday Morning!

Ain't it marvelous?!

Well, to be honest its raining and yucky here in I-O-WA, and will be for the next couple of days.  Blech.  However...  I am giddy with the idea of a QUIET house!  

Isn't it lovely?

Silence.

Yes.

Silence.

*sigh*

Its just me, the comforting rumble of the furnace, and my 2nd cup of Dunkin' Donuts Coffee.  Complete and utter contentment.

I love my kiddos, but sometimes I just need me time.  I've been sorely lacking in that department lately - and as such, been wound tighter than a string on a violin.  Seriously.

So, until Landon tumbles down the stairs on half-awake little feet, I am going to enjoy just BEING.

*sigh*

And I will NOT think about tomorrow... which begins with an 8:30 a.m. Christmas Sing (actually its a "Winter" Sing, but I refuse to be PC about the birth of our Savior) at the elementary school, followed by who knows what, then Greyson's first basketball game of the season 45 minutes away  in Charles City at 4:15 p.m., which will probably mean a super-sonic flight back this way for the boys' wrestling practice at 6:30 p.m.  Ugh.

Not thinking.

Not thinking.

Not thinking.

*sigh*

So, since I don't have a lot to blog about today, (even though I did attempt to get up to some craftiness this weekend, I just didn't finish anything), here's a couple of sneak peeks at a couple of projects I've got going...

Reinstalling the original back door:

See the areas of gray (well, actually it was beige, but it showed up gray)?  Well, the door used to be painted with that all over.  When we started remodeling the kitchen (Ahem, TWO YEARS AGO, Scott) we took down the back door, with the idea I would strip every single painted surface in the kitchen that was original to the house and I wanted to save.  Yeah.  Right.  Its been sitting in the barn for two years.  So, we've had no door in between the mudroom and the kitchen.

Mudroom.  Yeah, I use that term loosely.  It holds a set of 8 lockers we got from a local high school locker room when two schools were consolidated, a chest freezer, a 2nd refrigerator, and has hooks for all the kids coats and book bags which still - despite the way cool lockers that any kid would love to store their stuff in - are thrown on the floor in front of their locker or piled in a corner.  The "mudroom" (technically an addition of an enclosed back porch) is not insulated, so it is FREEZING in there in the winter.  Yep, another item on the never-ending "To-Do" List.

So, yesterday I had Scott bring the back door in, so I could commence stripping it of the first layer of paint that had begun bubbling off before we took it down in 2009.  (If I could my hands on the people we bought this house from because of stupid stuff like using water based paint on top of oil based paint.  :P)  So, with my hand-dandy Sam's Club Card (LOL!) I commenced peeling paint, with the idea that I could get that top layer off and then just paint over the other 6 layers of paint without taking any of them off.  Luckily, several layers peeled off with the first leaving me with the original white that was painted over the varnished oak.  Not so luckily, it looks terrible.  FIVE HOURS OF PEELING PAINT and I'm still no closer to that door being done.  ARGH.  (I gotta get a heat gun for the other doors to the built-in hutch.)    I decided to hedge my bets (Please Lord, please let it work!) and sanded the dickens out of it, then applied Liquid Sander and DeGlosser onto the oil based paint just to be doubly sure the primer would adhere, and then applied my primer right on top of it.  I'm not very patient.  I don't care if it looks old and shabby, since that's what I was going to do to it any way (which drives Scott nuts because I'll have something old looking new and then I make it look old again.  HA HA HA).  The door will just be authentically old and shabby.  LOL!

Stay tuned to see what we do with the opening where the glass used to be.  :)  No details of how that wonderfully thick original glass got broken...  I'll just say we have FOUR boys.  It survived over 100 years and a tornado, but it didn't last 2 years in the house with my crew.  :P  Hopefully it wil be completed TODAY - but don't hold your breath on that one.  ;)

Then there's this:

I'm not going to tell you what its for or what it is.  This is the "1st draft".  I finished painting it Saturday night.  Hopefully today it will be installed.  Just thought I'd give you a little peek.

So, that's what I'm up to today...

And probably tomorrow...

and more than likely the next day.  :P

As I've said more than once, its a loooooong, slooooooow process around here, but that makes us appreciate it more...  I think.  ;)

Hope y'all have a marvelous Monday and a wonderful week!