1 B is for Barre and Ballerina

This is one of those projects that seems sooo easy you just put it off and off and off... you know what I'm talking about?  I finally got around to putting up the barre up after hmm.... how many times of being asked?  I think my excuse was that because it was so simple I over complicated things and tried to add improvements to it like making it adjustable so I didn't have a bunch of holes in the wall to deal with later when Abby grows taller!  My thinking just got in the way!

The ballet barre is supposed to be around 9" from the wall, but I wasn't about to buy special brackets at $40 a pop.  Instead I searched my rummage pile in the basement for something and came up with a perfect solution, well almost perfect...  We had two of these curtain brackets left over from our Family Room decorating.  Although not 9" long they provide enough room for a little hand to grab onto the barre and perhaps a little foot to rest there.

I sanded them down a little but not to bare wood, we wanted them to have a shabby chic look when they were painted.  I hopped over to Home Depot to pick up a dowel, which was my only expense for the project!

Still a pretty simple project huh?  Well I had a split second thought of "how am I going to paint this (the dowel) without smearing the paint from holding it?"  The solution was to put a small nail in each flat end.  I put one end into a box and rested the other end onto the lip of a plastic bucket.  I could now rotate as needed, worry free.  For the brackets I simply put a screw through the holes and pushed them into the box as well.

Now just for making a bunch of holes in the wall and screwing it all into place!  I left the brackets far enough from the mirror just in case we want to add trim around it in the future.  I like the fact the brackets included a hole to put a screw through to hold the dowel in place.  Not bad - especially for only $8 $4.21 - oh and the mirror, that was also free but check out Melissa's blog to see where we got it from.  I guess I'll have to not over complicate things in the future and just 'get r done'.

Don't forget to check out Melissa's blog with other details!

1 The Doors...

Well I can't say with any certainty, but I'm not sure I have ever heard one of The Doors' songs or can even put their name to their music.  Luckily though I'm not writing about them but writing about our similarly 'famous' new doors.

I had the opportunity to get these from a person I work with who bought the former home of an NFL player.  Fortunately for us he was planning on replacing the doors and was eager to give them up (perhaps for all my hard work???).  

Take a look at what an improvement they are over our 1977; dark stained; hollow core doors when we moved in. 


We've always wanted to replace the doors, even in our old house and now that the opportunity came about - why not?

The installation was pretty simple and I was quite surprised.  I had dreams about all the work involved in routing new hinges in the door frames, trimming the doors on the table saw because of some out of square frames, and on and on...

Even though there were three hinges on the replacement doors I decided not to worry about the middle one.  The top and bottom hinges were enough to support the doors.  The hinges on the new doors did not match up exactly with their door frame counterpart so Abby supervised me in chiseling a slightly larger recess into the doors.

I didn't have a rounded corner chisel so you can see I need to do a little repairing before I paint.  I'll also have to patch where the center hinge was.

We re-used the hinges to save a little money even though they aren't the exact finish as our new door handles - they are close though.

We still have to replace the pantry, bathroom, linen and bedroom closet doors as there weren't enough free doors to do them all.  But beggars can't be choosers so we'll take what we have and buy other six panel doors later.  I'll also put a rounded chisel on the shopping list!

Don't forget to check out Melissa's blog with other details! 

0 The Start of Something...

So I'm pretty excited to start my own blog - it's not like me to update my status or post anything about myself with any social media outlet, but I look forward to doing so in regard to our new house and the 'Behind The Scenes' of how everything came to be.

With Melissa running the main 'Result' blog here, I'll concentrate on the details of what went into the result and all my struggles from beginning to end!

I hope you all enjoy and maybe even learn a thing or two - not that I have all the answers, but more like learn from my mistakes!

Thanks to Melissa who finally became excited to have a dual blog - can we now be called bloggin' buddies?