Hey look! Remember when our garage doors were awful? Yeah, I sure do.

Original to the house, they haven’t been taken care of at all over the years. Peeling paint, giant holes, ghetto closures, warped wood…pretty much every horrible thing possible. They were in rough shape.

Now that most of the exterior painting is almost complete it was time to address the garage doors. We can’t afford new garage doors right now, but we could afford about $50 worth of materials to patch them up and paint them black. Behr Ultra Pure Black for the curious (in a semi-gloss).

First thing first. The Boy removed all the hardware, extra nails and broken bits of rotted wood. He sanded down the paint and patched all the damaged nooks and crannies. Seems like sixty years can fuck a door up.

All that white. That’s the exterior wood filler. Each door needed a couple of coats of patching and some major sanding work.

He got the first coat of black on the right door to see how it looked and then it was time to patch up all the wood edging (which was equally as damaged).

Here it is about halfway through. One door done, the other ready for paint. The trim was also getting patched up.

BEFORE

AFTER

The doors are painted and the trim is patched and ready for more of the white paint we’ve used on the entire house. Six five gallon buckets of it so far.

Bam! Sort of done. Almost.

There is still a bit of touch-up and a couple of spots that need paint. The Boy sort of gave up after he stepped in the five gallon bucket of paint while climbing down the ladder.

Yeah.

Seriously.

Like up to his calf in white paint.

Ruined his flip flop and everything.

Gotta say the painted doors are much better than the before though. All that boring prep work was really vital to get the shiny black looking killer. Now I’m thinking we don’t need to replace the doors after all. You know what I can’t wait for? I can’t wait till we are done with exterior projects and all the ugly tools and buckets and STUFF that accumulates can go away forever. I can’t remember a time when the exterior was clean and truly free of clutter or weeds or ugly crap just scattered everywhere. One day. I hope. Before this house kills us.

If you somehow haven’t noticed, I really like The Ace Hotel in Palm Springs. So, when it came time to figure out some exterior lighting for the house I deferred to The Ace and the industrial lights installed outside their room doors. I loved the simplicity of the design, the industrial quality and the low, low price. Easy to source, we just went to Home Depot and bought a set of four.

Vapor Tight!

When we bought the Brick House there were no exterior lights installed, just a bunch of empty holes with cables strung through. About a year ago we tried to install some exterior lights and went TOTALLY CRAZY. The wiring was so funky that the lights would just stay on or sometimes one would shut off and two would go on and after about a week of fiddling with it we gave up. It was stupid and we were stupid.

Now that most of the painting is done (we still have a little more to go – it’s never going to end) we started talking again about the stupid exterior lights. Knowing that we were not qualified to deal with this problem we talked our electrician buddy Chris to come out and try and figure out what the hell was going on.

Installing them was pretty easy and figuring out what was wrong with the wiring was also pretty easy for Electrician Chris. I guess they were wired for Photocells or something. Whatever. We are dumb.

We did end up adding an extra light to the corner above the patio since the whole side yard is pitch black at night. Electro Chris tied this light into the other garage lights like magic! Custom shit.

I know the garage doors are all atrocious and the patio is a mess, but look, we have lights. After two and a half years of living in the dark, we have exterior light! This is a big deal. Go 2010 Year of The Exterior. GO.

We don’t have to stumble around in the dark to take out the trash anymore. Huge achievement.

Yep. They work best at night.

Yeah. They are gross.

I’m seriously considering replacing the warped and rotted doors with commercial steel roll up doors. I like that they are cheap, take up a small amount of space and have a linear horizontal pattern. It’s a thought, but nothing has been decided. It’s an idea for “The Future”. I think for now we will paint them black and figure out the next step later.

I’ve continued thinking about the back patio since the last post. I’m kind of sold on eventually installing a tankless water heater so that we can at least free up that tight corner.

The other thing I was wavering about was continuing the slats on the back patio. I’ve been trying to figure out how we could get rid of at least one of the three stupid doors and not do any major masonry cutting and rearranging. We always try to create the most impact for the least amount of money and skill required. Any MAJOR rearranging of exterior exits of the house is not an option. Every opening in the house is lined with custom bull-nosed cement bricks from 1950 and they don’t make that shit to patch things up with anymore. Plus we don’t know how to do it and we can’t afford it and I’m not convinced that the investment will pay off in the long run in our neighborhood.

So…my idea is to make a solid redwood wall that intersects with the open slats that will essentially “cover” the weird third exterior door. On the inside of the bathroom we can just rip down molding stick some insulation in and drywall over the door. *POOF* Door gone. It would not a huge investment, it creates more interior space in the bathroom and we are totally DIY capable of doing it.

Afterwards we can throw a butterfly chair and a small table in that new alcove. Then the little useless back porch area becomes a sitting destination, or smoking area since that seems to be what most visitors use it for.

BTW – one of my dream pieces of furniture is a Richard Schultz petal table. Drool…

My favorite part of the front porch slat screen is the area that wraps around the side of the house. I think it would be nice to mimic that on the back porch and create an architectural division of the various exterior areas into more manageable rectangles.

Also, check it out! I fixed those pesky fake shade sails to look more accurate. I think I’m kind of sold on them. They are pretty cheap, but make a giant statement whilst keeping the hottest (most sun exposed) side of the house a bit cooler.

Apologies for the gratuitous sketchup posts. I know…boring ideas for the future…less talk more action! But now that we are moving along with the exterior I want to make sure to really plan everything out so that we use our money wisely by really thinking through the entire design and hopefully keeping it all cohesive. Plus, your guys tips and experience with things like water heaters, plants, shade sails, paint, ect. have really helped us figure out the potential cost/problems/solutions that we might encounter. It’s amazingly helpful.