Sometimes, often, a lot of the time I’ll do a project with the intention of writing about it here, but if I don’t get rightonit, I transition into forgetting about it, or deciding after the fact that it’s boring, uninteresting, not relatable, not blog-worthy, or simply something that it doesn’t warrant its own post.
I’ve got a whole folder of these projects and activities. Maybe smushing some of them into one succinct overview will pique more interest than one-offs. Enjoy! Many more to come.
1. Sometimes I just really like a detail found in our home.
Like the thoughtful trim work around the front door. You just don’t see this anymore. Man, those are some drafty gaps.
2. Sometimes I drink too much coffee and make poor painting decisions.
On the last random 70-degree day in October, I found myself with the time and motivation to complete something that had been on my list for a year: re-painting the garage door. The door itself is great; very solid, very heavy, no windows for peepers and creepers, and original to the house. It had some peeling paint, typical maintenance stuff, and I took the unseasonably warm weather as an opportunity to GO-GO-GO. The prep stuff all went really well, except for the fact that my favorite painting jeans had (and have) an absolutely ginormous tear in the right butt cheek region, rendering 95% of my photos NSFW, nor not my style for the internets. This priming image is about all I’ve got for ya, folks.
In what I would say is a “typical Emily” fashion, I convinced myself part way through paint scraping, power sanding, and then priming, that white paint would simply not do (“new white paint is soooo bright!”). Having Sherwin-Williams tint the paint I had already purchased would be an excellent idea; a light brown! Brilliant – it would look great with the mortar between the flagstones on our house, plus they could shake-shake-shake that paint can that had been sitting around the garage since the Memorial Day sale, and save me some extra stirring (never completely satisfied with my own paint stirring abilities = OCD).
There are reasons you bring home paint chips and consult with your gut on things like this, and because I didn’t, I had painted half of the door in SW 6154‘s yellowy-beige (arguably not a “warmer white”) before realizing that it was completely wrong for our home, and moped away to clean my brushes without finishing the job. It is incredibly humiliating to admit that our street-facing garage door is two awkward shades of white/beige, and now I’m forced to look at it however many times a day when I come and go until the weather turns around and I can buy more paint and spend more time on this project. Eye roll. (Pete wants to add that it’s not as bad as I’m making it sound.)
3. Sometimes all it takes is a bullseye.
I never told you about the time we bought Julia an archery bow and arrows; it was immediately after moving into the house, her housewarming gift from us. What we wanted were a few big bales of hay for her to launch bows into, but what I came upon were a set of f-r-e-e 1x1x2 solid styrofoam blocks that had been delivered to Tractor Supply Company as packaging around lawn mowers. I also drove them home 200 miles, because Tractor Supply was something I was passing randomly on the way home from traveling somewhere or other, and I could only take 10 because they filled the entire back of my Jeep. I’d still recommend this solution as a completely viable (and free/affordable) solution for target practice; they worked really well for us when it’s not windy, and we still have all of the blocks, which is a testament to how well they’ve held up after being stabbed at high speed, repeatedly.
And… spray paint disintegrates styrofoam, if you weren’t already aware. Use alternate means of painting on that target.
4. Sometimes we make cool discoveries.
Pardon our mess, but do you see the rectangle of poorly patched wall above our “floor lamp?”
Do you see it now?
Probably took us a year to notice this, because the lighting had to be right. Have been meaning to ask the previous owner about this for some time, because to us, it would appear that there was once a cool inset shelf in the wall.
5. Succulent gardens are never interesting.
But use aquarium gravel for an inexpensive, nice polished-looking stone topper. You’re welcome.
Comment
Your garage door color story sounds exactly like something I would do. (Probably also fueled by too much coffee.)
The back of our house sported a lovely paint sample square of yellow paint (Valspar Sunrise Beach, from the defunct Seaside Retreat line) with a smaller rectangle of blue for the shutters for far too long. And then a few years ago we painted about 3/4 of the house Valspar Fairmont Suite Gold. Except that we were painting during the summer when it rains almost every afternoon/evening, so I never took the time on one of the sunny days to finish painting the house. I did paint the windowsills and most of the front planter… something along the lines of Valspar Almost Charcoal? (That’s right, I left the third, smallest side of planter the peach color the previous owner chose, for some reason. Maybe it started raining?) And the shutters stayed white, which I’m sure looked great. We were Those Neighbors for quite a while.
One warm day last December I got a wild hair to remove the shutters entirely, and finally finish along the eaves and the bottom of the house. Only I convinced Robert that we should repaint the entire house a few shades lighter, AND redo the windowsills and (all of) the planter in a darker gray. So we bought a five gallon bucket of Valspar Crane Cottage Yellow, and worked our way around 3 sides of the house from top to bottom. And then it got too cold to paint. We finally finished painting the windowsills and planter Valspar Ebony Field this weekend. The backside of our house is… still Valspar Fairmont Suite Gold with Almost Charcaol windowsills. Well, except the small inside corner between the laundry and living room with the outdoor shower is painted a light blue (Valspar Porch Swing).
Long story short… I agree with Pete, I’m sure your garage door isn’t as bad as you’re making it sound! :)