Oh my goodness...

It's March already! We had a 'winter project' to do to get us through the dark dreary days, and I guess we were successful! Here it is, lighter, later, and we're done.

The project? (My blog also acts as my record of things done.) We replaced our interior doors. They had been plain and ugly and one of the first things we noticed about our house before we bought it that we thought would need to be replaced. But other things took priority and here it is, four and a half years later, and we just managed to do it.

Of course the delay had a lot to do with the fact that we didn't know HOW to do it. But Mark had some ideas about the tools that would make the job easier, and we talked to the helpful guys at Lowes and before we knew it we had loaded 9 new 6-panel doors into the truck and there we were, in the garage with our new Jaw Horse with a door clamped to it and an electric planer poised to make the first cuts... All our projects seem to start like that.

Of course there were a few hitches. There are always hitches.

One of them was that we got bright white paint and it turned out that bright white wasn't the color we had painted the trim with before. But the bright white looked so nice on the new doors - great contrast with the wall paint - so there was nothing for it, we had to repaint all the trim in the house. Quite a project in itself. We finished this weekend.

And naturally, while we were at the home improvement store buying more and more painting tape, we also ended up with new light fixtures for the hallway and bedrooms and had to get those installed too. And all the way around, I think it made a difference - it doesn't seem like it was such a long winter after all.

Not that we can rest on our laurels. We discovered that the last door - the 10th door - the one between the garage and the laundry - has to be a steel fire door (and currently isn't) and that means a different installation - cutting out the existing frame and starting from scratch. And once again we are clueless how to proceed.

But we'll figure it out. We always do.

And in the meantime, winter is almost over. We've turned our sights to planning a spring vacation that we just might be able to make happen after all. Mission accomplished.