Archive for the ‘DIY’ Category

Front Door

Wednesday, August 18th, 2010

Screw you ugly screen door. Screw you big weird hole.

We finally got motivated and figured out how to fix the big hole in the front door – which means the front door is going to rehab.

Screw you as well stupid Realtor lock box.

The Boy made a little custom wood chunk to fill the giant hole below the doorknob. He puttied it up with some wood filler and then proceeded to fill a bunch of wonky holes throughout to get it primed for painting.

Sand sand sand. Patch patch patch.

Then we tried painting the door and…disaster.

It looks terrible.

Smooth roller + Behr exterior True Black in a semi-gloss = WTF. It’s ugly finish city. It was the same combo we used for the garage doors. So what went wrong?

I don’t know. I googled and googled to no avail.

As a last resort I spoke with the paint guy at Home Depot. He said it was a drying problem; the paint was drying too quickly and we weren’t putting enough paint on the roller as well as pressing too hard. Therefore, bad finish.

Since we were sanding things down and calling a do over, I decided we needed to patch up the peep hole. We had a big ornate brass thing that just wasn’t going to work with the more modern hardware we were installing. The Boy and I argued back and forth about its inclusion, and in the end The Boy cut and fit another custom chunk of wood to seal that eyesore up forever. More wood filler, more sand sand sand and BAM, solid door.

Here is the final interior after repainting and installing the new hardware. I settled on Emteks Stuttgart Lever which was $55 and a specially sized 1-1/2″ Schlage B560P deadbolt for about $35. Why the weird small deadbolt that is super expensive? Well, we tried to bore out our other exterior doors to fit a standard deadbolt and it was a complete nightmare. A nightmare I swore we would not repeat. Too bad I forgot that satin nickle is not the same color as satin chrome. Both the handle and deadbolt only offered either finish, so that means no shared finish color. Damn this door and all its stupid complications!

The deadbolt did fit like a dream, BTW.

We still need to patch and paint the exterior molding and door jamb. Oh, and paint the cement porch. At least that screen door is dead and gone.

See the lovely lumps on the upper left of the door reflecting all weird? You can totally feel them undulating under your hand. UGH. These were yet another thing contributing to the weird finish. They are not lovely lady lumps, but bizarre rolling mounds. They make me crazy.

I give up, we are calling it done. Stupid old fucked up door.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

It works. I am so done screwing around with it. Better this than a big stupid hole in the door filled with spiders.

Now we need a large modern planter next to the door with some sort of cactus. Then porch paint. Hardscape. New fence. Gate. Landscape. Mailbox. Edging. And then on and on and on and on…

FILED UNDER: after, before, DIY, door, exterior

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House Numbers

Monday, July 5th, 2010

One of the first things I purchased for The Brick House was a set of Neutra address numbers. Not from DWR but from a fancy schmancy modern home design shop in Palm Springs. The numbers have since sat in a drawer for over two years…taunting me with their acceptable streamlined modernity. I didn’t know what the hell we were doing with the remodel but I for some fucking reason NEEDED rad house numbers to make it feel authentic.

Now that the house is (finally) almost painted, it was about time to slap those babies into place. We started by lining up the templates provided and struggled to get everything square and level.

We used a cheap hammer drill to punch some 7/8″ holes in the concrete block – the paper template also had a handy guide for where the holes needed to be punched.

Once the holes were drilled and the numbers readied, we squeezed silicone caulk into the crevasses and inserted the threaded rods attached to the backside of each number. The painters tape held everything in place while the caulk dried for 24 hours.

BAM! Address numbers.

When removed the tape they didn’t fall out or anything! In fact they are quite sturdy – thank you included instructions.

The threaded rods have spacers in order to float the numbers off the wall. We picked this install spot since it would be comfortably visible from the street, illuminated when the porch light was on and not blocked by the slat screen.

I’m so sick of that awful screen door. I cannot tell you how much I am DYING to rip it off and restore the front door. We still need to repair the door – get new hardware and paint the whole thing black. Then finally I will burn that fugly screen door.

All the vents still need to be painted and a color needs to be picked for the patio…then hardscape…then landscape…then sell this place…

It’s been years since I bought those expensive numbers and guess what – Home Depot came out with a set of floating modern house numbers that are only $5.99 each. The Boy likes to point them out every single time we walk by the address aisle. Yeah – I’m an asshole, but I love my numbers.

It’s good though, because those Home Depot cheapies are going on our custom mailbox.

FILED UNDER: after, DIY, exterior, landscape

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Fire Pit : Redux

Thursday, June 10th, 2010

The old cinder block fire pit did not work. Whoops! (That’s why I never posted a true DIY). Good thing it was dirt cheap to build.

When we visited T.K. and Jill’s house in Joshua Tree, T.K. gave us a little introduction tutorial class in welding. Now we are putting that new skill to use to rebuild our crappy fire pit. We will build it better, stronger, more metal-y than before.

We bought four 40″ x 20″ sheets of 12 gauge hot rolled steel from Riverside Industrial Metal Supply.

Our new fancy magnets were very useful for holding together the two pieces of steel in order to get them tack welded at a 90 degree angle. Best tool ever.

The first half got spotted in place and it started to look like something…

The metal fire pit will be sunk into the ground with eight cold rolled steel rod supports to hold it square and add strength.

It’s a big metal square!

We added foot long cold rolled steel rods to the corners and in the middle of each panel. They aren’t pretty but they are getting installed underground – so they don’t really need to be.

Installing the larger metal pit where the old cinder block fire pit died it’s horrible death was kind of a pain. Everything got ripped out and a larger, deeper hole had to be dug out. A sledge hammer and plank of wood helped sink it level into the soft soil. In the end we left about 14″ of steel above ground.

BAM! DONE. Indestructible fire pit. I want it to rust up a bit to match the sketch up version:

I think for our first welding project that it turned out really great! It was about $100 for all the material and took us three or so days to put it together with a bit of a learning curve. The Boy ended up doing most of it after falling deeply in love with welding and telling me my welds suck. Good thing, because we have a lot more metal to slap on this house and I’m going to put him to work.