Our Happy Red Front Door!

Ever since we moved in to our house, I knew that I wanted to refinish the front door and paint it a nice cheerful red. So, a few weekends ago Marcos and I (with lots of help from the little man of course) took on the project we've been putting off for almost 2 years. It was a beautiful Saturday with not much going on and we knew we could get by without having a front door for a few hours so we got busy. 

We took the door off its hinges and moved it into the garage where Marcos started the process of sanding it down (ugh) while I went to pick out a paint color.

Oh, and of course our little supervisor...

Meanwhile, our front door looked like this...an  extra comforter from the closet held up by thumb tacks. 

I think it was about 3 trips to the paint store and several hours later, we had finished the sanding process and had a paint and primer ready to go. We used the color Salute by Sherwin Williams just FYI.

After we finished sanding however we realized that there were a lot of cracks that needed to be caulked in order to get a better looking finish. So, we did that which brought us to this point.

Then we had to do the first coat of primer on the front side of the door. Which of course I didn't get any pictures of because I was racing the clock and a fussy baby by this time. After waiting for the primer to dry it was getting dark and cold so we called it a day and put the door back on.

Then Sunday afternoon during naptime we got to the fun part and knocked out both coats of paint on the front of the door. Which of course I also didn't get any pictures of because I was the one painting and I don't think of things like that. Ya know, I'm new at this whole blog thing...

Anyway, we didn't get to the back of the door so we still have to decide what we are doing with that and do it. But this is what we ended up with after our little weekend project.

Not bad, eh? I love love love the red color! It makes me happy every time I look at it!

So that's the story of our happy red front door. 

House Tour - Before and After: Exterior and front porch

One of my goals for this blog is to document the crazy adventure we have been on for the past almost 2 years now of completely remodeling our house. Eventually, I would like to write a post going through each of the before and after's of all the rooms in the house. So, this is the first of those posts. I'll call it the House Tour - Before and After. 

So, naturally we should start with the first thing you would see when you come to our house...the exterior and front porch. I'm not sure that this can technically be called an "after" because we still have a lot we want to do but this is the current state...and it's a whole lot better than it was! 

So here we go! This is what we inherited when we bought the house in February 2011...

Yeah, that even makes me a little scared looking at it...

Before we moved in after our wedding in March, Marcos and his parents did some general clean-up and bush-whacking which left it looking like this.

Muuuuuuuuch better but still not exactly a welcoming home-y sight. About a year and a half in we had removed the two dead trees, had a lawn care service help us out with the nasty dead grass, and tried our hand at planting our first flower bed, along with reframing the front windows so that it looked like this (notice the plywood walls around the windows).

And then in June 2012 we did the siding with TONS of help from family and friends who we are sooooooo grateful for! At that time we also removed the rotten beams from over the front entryway.

We also recently refinished the front door which you can read about here.  So about two years and lots of blood, sweat, and tears later it looks like this...

oh yeah, and we added a little monkey during that time too if you didn't notice from the photo bomb.

We still have a lot we want to do with the front porch and flower beds, but at least its not like walking into a jungle to get in the front door. 

Gotta love a great before and after!

SNOW!!

It's snowing here today! E is taking a nap and I have a few minutes to blog so I thought I'd share his first experience playing in the snow. Here he is after he first discovered that white stuff was falling from the sky and started asking the never-ending question, "whas dat?"

He's seen snow before but I guess not since he was big enough to realize that it was something unusual. :) He finally decided that looking through the window just wasn't good enough and he wanted to go outside.

So, we did and of course he loved it

A day in the life of a birthday boy

Since E's first birthday party was the Saturday before his actual birth date, these are the pictures from what we did on his actual birthday. Just a typical day for us but we tried to do some fun things for the birthday boy :)

Good morning Mommy!

Today I helped with the laundry...

...avoided getting dressed for as long as possible...

...loved on JoJo....

...went to the library...

...played with Daddy...

 ...went on a walk...

 ...went to Ihop...

...was cute. :)