Door of My Heart

At the beginning if this month, I got super pumped on caffiene(I don't drink, so caffiene has to be my only motivator) and decided to vamp my entry. Note that I didn't say REvamp, because you can't revamp something that has never been vamped in the first place.

A few years ago I got super tired of our front door. A few months ago we finally did something about it.

This picture also gives you an idea of how dark and boring my entry way started out, but please focus on the door for now. Everyone in the neighborhood has this front door. And each door exterior is painted a super awesome shade of brown or tan or black, to make them stand out you know.

So while trolling the classifieds, as I often do, I came across this beauty, shown here already installed:

The picture is not the greatest, I had to take it at night, there is too much light coming through the windows! Which is amazing, because it was super dark before. Also, please ignore the scratched up window film, my two year old loves to stand at that window and wait for his dad to come home. And while he's waiting, he also likes to take coins and cars and plastic dinosaurs and scratch at the paint…

 It's brand-new, with a couple of "defects", which were basically barely visible light scratches that you can only see if you put your face right  to them and squint. It fit perfectly, which was a huge relief. My husband did most of the work hanging it, but I stood around and watched and occasionally held it in place while he screwed in the hinges. I'm definitely the one who is into the DIY projects, but I'm always grateful for his help, which I get whenever I ask, because he's awesome. Total cost for this project: $200.

It makes a huge difference curb-appeal-wise also.

You guys, I really need a better camera. But the door looks great even in low quality phone camera mode. 

Yeeeeeeeee! Sorry for the outburst, vamping makes me really giddy. You don't know me yet, but giddy is not a common emotion for me. Also, I'm beginning to worry that vamping means something dirty and I'm going to start showing up in the wrong kinds of google searches...

Tomorrow we'll talk about my very first solo project, a giant wall of square board and batten!

Blogs are out, but people are texting each other.

This blog is something I've wanted to do for a while. I love to write. I love to DIY. And now the two shall become one in this tiny crevice of internet.

So...a little introduction. This is already harder than I thought!  I'm Candace. I have four sometimes lovely children. I absolutely hate all kinds of pizza. And five years ago, my husband and I built a very basic, very affordable house in the burbs. Here she is:

I actually really love my house. When we built, we made sure to choose every architectural upgrade we could--so we've got some nice tall ceilings, pop out windows, and open rooms. 

BUT. The builder only offered one color of granite by way of countertop upgrades, and I wasn't a fan. No tile options. Two paint color options. I'm not kidding, it was bad. 

We went with the lesser of two evils for the paint color because we really didn't want to try and paint 14' ceilings. 

As for the rest..."We can do it ourselves!" we said. "it will be easy and cheap!" we said. 

Five years later and we have done very little. I realized quickly that my husband is not into home improvement projects. It's hard to self motivate when you have no idea what you're doing, and hiring contractors for everything isn't an option. "Hundred House" seemed like an apt description because I feel so overwhelmed by the literally hundreds of projects waiting to be done to made the place mine.

So here I am ready to learn and do most of it myself(eeeeek). I will be sharing my projects here--sometimes with tutorials, sometimes not--because I do a lot of things by the seat of my pants.

So if you are reading this, THANK YOU. I really feel better knowing that someone else is reading my chatter,. Makes me feel like I'm not just babbling to myself like a crazy person!