My Mom's birthday & I take on yet another project that is too big...

My mom's birthday was yesterday, so she and my dad decided to bring over fresh crab they'd caught literally the day before by diving for it, and my dad installed two new outlets in my garage (including adding them to my fusebox) to decrease the chances of Valerie unplugging my freezer again, not to mention the fact that the 1 outlet our  garage started with  is just  stupid. Then my mom proceeded to wash all the dishes up for me.  Seriously, you'd think it was my birthday!

Today we slept until 9am! But made up for lost time quickly. I made a loaf of white bread and tried hot dog buns (still need some help with shape, but they made nice breadsticks!)  I also installed two retractable solar clothes dryers (clotheslines) in my no often used side yard, did laundry and hung it out to dry as well as mow the front and back lawn. All before noon!

Then a trip to one of my new favorite stores Restore where I dropped off the old light fixtures from the kids' rooms (replaced those last week) and looked for doors.... you see my office closet door (bifold) fell off the track and my sweet husband went to put it back up for me. He succeeded, but in the process dropped the door into my office door and busted a hole in it since the doors are cheapo contractor grade hollow doors in our house. 

I had gotten the idea to get a charming old door with some character and maybe a window and I'd lovingly sand it down , possibly paint it and install it into my office. Yeah, if you know me, you know where this is going right? Erin takes on another project she thinks she can handle and her husband (or father as the case is sometimes) has to help her finish it because she does something stupid/wrong/too difficult and veers off course. Best intentions, I suppose.

Restore has about 3 aisles of doors, you go to the section (interior, with glass, exterior, 4 panel, etc.) and on masking tape on the side is the price of the door as well as the measurements. I found a matching measurement door that looked alright, it was $45.  A hollow door is about $22 at the home improvement store a new "slab" door (solid) is about $150.  Yes, I could have gotten a new, french primed door, but whatever....

I removed some old hardware and tried to sand this puppy, did not work.  So I put on two layers of paint on each side (adding to the probably 7 layers already on it.  I also noticed a small crack in the upper corner of the window.

I also found the beautiful door knobs that are from Australia, were barely used and I got them for $25 pretty good considering I found them online for about $65.  However, this was the part I also messed up, I couldn't figure out how to screw it onto the door and completely took it apart trying to figure it out, including dropping some pieces. So Paul came home from work and we played a game of Try to Figure out How the Knob goes back together.  Paul eventually won and we got the sucker on.  However, it's still pretty stiff and the lock won't work (it did before I messed it up).

After installing it (I had to chisel since of course the hinges were in the wrong spots and I over chiseled and we had to add some cardboard.  I cut out some letters from repositional vinyl and finished it off...

 From inside my office

Close up of super cool knob

So if I had to do it again, I'd probably just head down to Home Depot and get one of these for $92.

But it's a nice door (heavy) and I did it myself and kept out of trouble for an afternoon. I have a feeling my husband is done with my projects for awhile!