Projects

There are a few projects that I had been wanting to get done around the house since we moved in, but never really had the time to do so with Kenny working 6 days a week.  Since Kenny was off last week, and we didn't go to Mexico, I got a couple of them done.

The first one was creating a place to hang our coats, bags, etc...  Surprisingly, with a house this size, there is no coat closet!  All of us got into the habit of just dropping everything in the dining room, which was a mess all the time.  So, I had seen a lot of pictures on Pinterest of shelves and hooks, and thought, I could probably make something like that.  And guess what?   I did!

I took Kenny to Menard's to look at all of the trim available.  We decided on the trim and then found the hooks we wanted.  Once we got home, we got to work.  First, we had to determine how long we wanted this thing to be so that it could adequately hold all of our things.  We used Halloween candy to figure out where we wanted the hooks.  After getting the spacing right, I made a template of the hooks to use so that they would all be level, and Kenny would know where to drill the pilot holes for the screws.  Then, Kenny helped me anchor the large center board to the wall.  I cut the trim on his table saw and attached it to the wall with my dad's nail gun.  I filled all of the holes (and the cracks left when I cut "on the line" instead of "leaving the line") with wood filler, sanded it smooth, and then painted it.  The last step was adding the hooks.

Here is the finished product, and I love it!  No more coats and bags on the floor!  The hooks are in the hallway next to the door to the garage.  Now, we can walk in the door and hang up our things.  Nice and tidy!

The next project was painting the front door and sprucing up the entryway.  The previous owners had a nice front door, but had never bothered to paint it.  It was the bare, factory, cream-colored metal and not attractive at all.  I painted the side panels a crisp white, and then the actual door, I painted black.

 Kenny and I love it!  Megan thinks it looks like we didn't have enough paint to finish the job.  Oh, well!

We also added a mirror to tie in with the black door.  Ethan has a fixation on wreaths and insisted that we put two Christmas wreaths on either side of the door.  Once Christmas is over, we plan to replace the wreaths with black, metal, hanging lanterns.

I bought a rug and a bench to complete the look.  The bench serves as a place for guests to take off and put on their shoes as well as extra seating for the dining room when we have parties.

Our house is slowly being transformed into our home and that is a great feeling.  It also doesn't look like we just moved in anymore, as it has for the past 7 months.