Trimming the New Slider

The night after we installed our new slider, there was a monsoon.  Seriously, no sooner did we get in the door, close it and turn off the light for the night that the rain started coming... and coming.  At one point in the middle of the night I was certain that the pounding rain would drive out our new nails and collapse the door inward.  Luckily, when we woke up the next morning, it was still standing.  

We took inspiration for the trim from the simple, mission style trim the Bath Crashers installed on our new windows and doors. 

I started by adding a piece of trim to the top, underside of the door. I was smart this time around and purchased pre-primed wood.  It wasn't much more expensive, and it saved a ton of time.  Time = Money.

Then we trimmed out the top piece above it.  This a a very "in progress" photo before it was completely nailed in.

Then I just did the same thing to the sides, first the inside trim, and then the outside casing.

I was left with a bunch of nail holes and seams, but they are easy to hide with a little painter's caulk.

And after two coats of paint- it looked like it had always been there.  Except now we could actually see out both windows, and I swear it makes the room look bigger.

We weren't done quite yet though, as there was still the issue of the outside.

I'm not going to lie, at this point I was done with the slider project.  Put a fork in me.  But there was no questioning that it had to get done, so I set up shop out on the deck and tried to enjoy the weather while I worked.

For the exterior I bought white, vinyl brick molding, which worked really slick. (I think I'm becoming my father.)

It took me just shy of an hour to make the cuts and get it installed perfectly, mostly because our opening was slightly bigger again, and I had to work a little magic with additional trim to accommodate.

Once the trim was in I sealed the hell out of it with exterior paintable caulk.  

To ensure I kept the cold air and rain out, I had to smooth caulk onto the siding quite a bit, which meant I would get to paint two colors out here, not just one.  WillItEverQuit?

But in the end, after I painted the trim and touched up the siding, I was pretty happy with our results.

All in it took us 2 full days of work, although much of it was done solo while the other parent kept an eye on the kiddos.  It wasn't that hard really, it just got long at the end.  Installing ourselves saved us at least a thousand dollars though, and made this a pretty quick and affordable project.  Plus, now we can actually see outside, and the whole room looks better now that there isn't this big focal point that made the room look old and worn.  Has anyone else ever installed a slider?  We considered changing this up with french doors, but with this being the only exterior window in this room, keeping it open is really important to us. With all the mosquitoes, screens are a must in Minnesota.  In the end we just didn't like the price and options there. All in, I'm happy with how this one turned out.

Install a New Sliding Glass Door

Now that the beautiful summer weather is upon us, it's getting more difficult to ignore a long time problem we've had at the house- the terribly old sliding glass door to our Master Bedroom Deck.  The seal on the left side is broken, which made half the view cloudy and dirty looking.

This slider is original to the house, 30+ years, so the wood frame has seen much better days as well.  The wood is rotting along the bottom and a friendly little group of ants seems to have made a cozy little home there.

Please ignore the unmade bed that the kiddos were rolling around in.

Three years into this home owning experience- (Whoa- can three years be right?) it was time to correct this major wrong.  We planned on a Saturday and Sunday to get the job done.  The hardest part was actually undocumented, as it was the Hubs and I trying to carry the new, huge, heavy and awkward door up our thousands of tight steps.

View from the top looking all the way down to the Family Room Wet Bar

There was cursing, there was dinging of the walls, and there was a very brief, obviously misguided moment when we wondered if hoisting it up from the Living Room Deck via a garden hose was a good idea.

Once the new door was successfully upstairs, we removed the molding on the old door and stared at it until we figured out how to take it out.  That's a pro tip for you right there.  

Since the old door was rotten and nailed with 30 year old nails, there was no easy way to take this guy out.  Just a couple of pry bars and a lot of me yelling "careful!" at the Hubs.  But after about an hour, we had a huge gaping hole in the side of our house to the outside.

Which marks our second large gapping hole in the side of a house in as many months.  We really need to quit doing this to ourselves.

Looking back into our bedroom at nearly the entire wall missing.  It's all fun and games until it gets dark and the mosquitoes and bats come out.

 

Which is why you'll have to forgive me that I don't have any in progress shots of getting the door back in.  Things got a little chaotic when we realized that we only had a few hours until dark.  Our biggest problem is that the new door size wasn't an exact match.  Even though we measured a bunch, sometimes it's really hard to know what your rough opening is until you actually demo out the old one.  And once the old one is out, you can't wait 3-4 weeks for the special ordered door.  But we adjusted by adding a bit more framing to the door that would have to be covered with molding.  (More on that in a bit.)  The good news is we placed the new door in our adjusted rough opening, shimmed for even spacing and drilled into the framework per the included instructions just in time.  We closed the door just as it got dark.

We weren't done, but at least we could go to sleep without a flying invasion.  And after the day we had of shopping, hauling, demoing and installing, we were glad to leave the finishing for the next day. 

More Master Bedroom Decisions

I can't thank you all enough for sounding off on the great window debate!

To be honest, from the beginning I've felt like windows into the Living Room would make the most sense based on how the house was built, but I was certain that I may be the only human in the world that felt that way.  Hearing all you (surprisingly) agree with me, was the push I needed to get over the hump.  That doesn't mean that I won't still place a window out on this wall to the backyard someday...

A few of you mentioned plantation shutters, which I agree would be a really good option, but I probably didn't describe well enough that the biggest problem with these 'holes' is the sound.  The Hubs goes to bed and wakes up really early, and the sound just echos through the house with all the open and high ceilings.  Which means I wake him up at night if I even open the dishwasher in the kitchen below, and the Hubs wakes me up just walking down the stairs in the morning.  

It. Has. To. Stop.

This amazing little option was brought to my attention though, and I'm totally smitten.

Gorgeous- right?  I can even see making these 3 holes one big one with these fold out windows like this.  I haven't gotten a price back yet, which will likely pop my little bubble, but for right now I'm lusting after these windows. Big time.

In the mean time, we're starting to come up with a plan for the fireplace situation. 

 

What fireplace situation you ask?  This one.

Bath Crashers put in this fireplace, and it has always felt really weird to us.  Not only is it free floating in the room,  but it is shorter than the wardrobes next to it.

 

 

It is also oddly positioned partially in front of the Hub's wardrobe, overlapping it by about 6 inches.  We're not sure why, and it just isn't working for us.  People are always like, "What's with the fireplace, was it always here?"  Yeah... uh no.

So the plan is to dismantle this little stack, keeping the cool fireplace box, and reinstall it into a full wall (floor to ceiling), that spans just halfway across the room, bringing a little more distinction between the two spaces.  Then we would wrap this fun, new, focal, fireplace wall with some sort of treatment.  Like tile:

Or wood:

Since you guys provided such great feedback on the last big choice- would please sound off on this one?  Do you like the tile, which could tie into the marble sink and make that space feel a little more cohesive? 

 Or do you prefer the wood which gives us more of the rustic vibe we're looking for in this house?  It's likely that the tile will cost much more, but we don't want to make a decision based on price alone in this forever house.  So if I could ask for this favor one more time, I can't wait to get your opinions and get moving on this weird room of ours. 

How to Tea Dye Curtains

When I last had you all up to the Master Bedroom (take it easy, it's not that kind of party) we got to take a look at the new West Elm inspired nightstands I built and the new lamps: 

I was particulary excited about the lamps, since they added a new cream color to the pallet.

Here's what it looks like with the lights out:

I was planning to add more color and dimension to this room, and originally I was thinking of going bold with a dark plum, eggplant or indigo.  That was until I found this, much more calming inspiration from West Elm.

I love the way the beige brings a natural tone to the room.  When we found the lamps, with their cream colored shades, and I was Jessie Spano excited that they worked. The next step was to find more ways to bring the color into the room.  And I was looking at those boring, and not-working-for-me white curtains.

I've read that tea dying is a nice technique to dye white fabrics a slight, and natural tan color.  But the best part- since the dye is all natural, if you don't like the result, you can just bleach your fabric back to white.  Fail proof DIY- that's what I'm talking about.

 So all I did was fill a big stock pot about 3/4 full, brought it to a boil, and put in 10 regular tea bags.  (I used black tea, but from what I gather any kind will do.)  After letting the tea bags seep for 5 minutes, I removed them and placed in 1 curtain panel at a time. 

It was trial and error.  The first time I soaked my curtain way too long (about 25 minutes), and even after I had rinsed all the tea out with cold water, it was much too dark.  I just threw it in the wash on a light cycle with soap though, and it came out the perfect color.  The next curtain panel I filled up a new pot, with 10 new tea bags, and this time only kept the curtain in for 5 minutes, which was perfect.  If you remember, we have a little problem with windows in the Master Bedroom, which we're still trying to figure out a solution for, but in the mean time I had 4 more curtain panels to dye.  I didn't want to buy my local grocery store entirely out of tea bags, so for the next panel I put it back into the same pot, but this time soaked the curtain a little longer, 10 minutes.  That seemed to do the trick and made them all roughly the same color.  Then I just needed to brew up 1 more pot for the remaining 2 curtains.  After they were all rinsed off and hung to dry, I had this:

I haven't hemmed the curtains yet, because I wanted to make sure I liked them first.  That's up for this weekend. 

I like that the color is subtle, and that the tea dye gave them a natural look and texture.  I hesitate to even show you this angle, because Lord knows I hate these windows to the Living Room, but you know how I am about here about over sharing.  The good, the bad and the uh-gly.

We may not even have curtains over on these windows once all is said and done, but it's nice to have them now in the meantime for a tiny little sliver of privacy. 
Sort of.

Beam Me Up Scotty

There's one little, but super useful detail that I neglected to share with you yesterday in my nightstand reveal post.  That's my super secret trick for managing our plug in electronics bedside.  The good news  is that you don't need to build your own nightstands to make this trick work at your bedside, it can be done with any piece.  

First I purchased a pack of small eyelet hooks from Home Depot.  Then I used 2 pliers, to twist the eye portion from the bottom of the hook, creating an opening in the eye.  It takes a little bit of elbow grease to open them up, but a set of pliers in each hand gives you a firm grip of each side and leverage.

 Then I twisted the eye bolts into the back of my nightstands, about 1 inch down from the top.

The opening in the eye bolt was just wide enough to get my iPhone plug in, as well as my Kindle charger, and the iPad on my Hub's nightstand.  Placing the eye 1 inch down from the top of the dresser ensured that my cables would stay right up at the top of the nightstand for easy access each night.

But that they were completely hidden from the front of the nightstand.  No mess of cables or plugs, and no digging around behind the nightstand each night to find the cord that fell down.

All in it cost me $1.47, and I'll save countless hours of frustration looking around for the cords each evening.  I've said it before, and I'll say it again, it's the little things around here.  I may have 2 disgusting bathrooms and a List full of dozens of projects, but simplicity and organization do it for me every time.

How about you guys?  Any fun organization tips you use in your home you'd like to share?  Any obsessive color coding and labeling?  Come on, it can't be just me... can it?