Privacy

So, with the holidays in full force (and taking most of our money) we haven't done very many projects around here lately with the exception of working on our front door. When we moved in, the front door had some sort of painted-on fake stained glass going on, which wasn't horrible but also was not our style and didn't go with the colors that we eventually want in the living room. I don't have a "before" photo because Alton removed the fake stained glass one day while I wasn't here. This is the best I've got:

You can see the design a bit although it is in a shadow. Anyway, here is the door after Alton got to it:

 You can see the back of my awesome homemade ornament wreath. :)

After he removed the "stained glass" we decided to try to "frost" the windows with contact paper. I found a couple of online tutorials, but when we tried it the results were not so great. I think the problem was that in both of the tutorials I found they cut out a pattern of small pieces so there wasn't as much of a surface area to smooth out. We wanted to frost the whole pane and when we tried to smooth out the contact paper we ended up with streaks and bubbles. It's hard to see in these photos, but it was not pretty. Oh well, a roll of contact paper is like $7.00. On to plan B!

Plan B was ordering a white roman shade online. I was able to find one for about $25.00 on clearance at JCPenny. 

Ta-da! Privacy!

It was really nice to get that shade put up after living with a towel over the door for a temporary curtain for about a month. This is much better.

Harley also decided to help us get started on another project, although it is one that we did not intend to tackle for a while:

While we were out, he found a loose bit of carpet near the threshold into the master bedroom and went to town. We would love to replace all of the flooring in the house anyway, but we have nowhere near enough money to do it, so unfortunately the carpet will probably look like this for a while...

Bad dog.

Q: What project did we start four months ago that was just completed?

A: Painting the patio railing.

We went for four months with half of the railing & the gates only being primed. We had good weather over the Labor Day weekend (I know, delayed post. Sorry.) and we got it all done then along with a bonus project I've had my eye on since moving day.

I'm so proud of that railing. Even if it does not do its primary job of keeping chickens off of the patio...

We need to buy or borrow a pressure washer and go over pretty much the whole outside of the house, but the metal patio roof is definitely one of the places that needs it most. We also plan to plant hydrangea bushes in the flower beds on either side of the stairs and we are thinking about removing one step leading to the patio in the hopes that perhaps that will deter the chickens from roosting on the patio railing.

The bonus project that got done over the Labor Day weekend along with the railing was the mailbox. When we moved in the mailbox was pretty ugly:

We kept the post, bought a $7 plain metal mailbox, and used some paint and primer we already had to paint the post and the numbers. For an almost free project, I think it made a huge difference:

A couple of numbers were blurred out for privacy.

I am in love with my new mailbox.

P.S. I just realized that I have never posted any photos of our dog, Harley on here. We got him in July. Shame on me. Here he is:

This is the day we got him:

 This was a few days ago:

They grow up so fast...