It’s a (Bathroom) Door!

(And other progress of the week)

If that subject line and sub-header drew you in, you may be as much of a renovation geek as I am. I’d love it if you’d “tell” me by liking – even sharing – my posts with any other renovation geek friends you may have.

That will be a huge help to me as I get closer to launching the book I’m writing about this odyssey – the more social media “action,” the better!

Speaking of the book, a few weeks back I received my first round of modifications from my editor. I’ve spent a good part of the intervening time incorporating more edits as well as the at-times-slightly-PTSD-inducing process of going back through a dozen years’ worth of photos. Eeee-gads.

Anyway, without further ado, here are the results of this week’s progress:

A Bathroom Door is Born

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It still needs an outside knob/pull/handle, which, now that the door is actually in-place, I was able to decide on yesterday. 2 – 3 weeks before it gets here, but – spoiler alert – it’s going to be the same as the knobs on the rest of the new doors in the house:

I looked all over for an actual handle that would “work” design-wise and I suppose I could have had something custom-made, but I love these stupid doorknobs so much that it just seemed to be the right answer. Although the door itself is heavy, the slide action is super-smooth, so a knob, while not quite as “accessibility-friendly” as a handle, will function just fine.

The Front Porch Ceiling

More trim work to go between the soffits and the carrying beams, but that has to wait until our resident purple finches have completed their baby-raising. My guess is that the baby – or babies – should be fledged within the next couple of weeks. I think the parents are new to this game – their nest is pretty haphazard with very little in the way of “sides,” so we know one baby met a sad, blind, early demise when it somehow fumbled out of the nest and perished on the edge of the porch. 🙁 It’ll be interesting to see if any other offspring make it all the way to fledgling stage.

We are also planning to go full-on when we paint, so the trim will all be the same off-white that’s on the window trim, and the beadboard ceiling itself will be some shade of a traditional “haint blue.” That’s gonna be cool.

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Soffits

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Always thinking ahead, he created a section on the right-hand side and back of the porch for a pop-out access panel so he can get up there for wiring access or other yet-unforeseen issues. The soffits on that section are deeper than the rest of them, so he had to use larger, unprimed stock on the back side of the soffit vents. Just another coat of paint. . .

He’s out there already this morning, working on finishing up the rest of the trim/moldings before he moves on to the garage overhang, then the overhang on the back deck. The side door has nesting phoebes, who seem to be taking their sweet time raising their family, so I suspect that will be the last part we can complete.

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Landscape Design

We have our version 1 (and version 1.1) drawings of ideas for the landscape design, and all I can say is, “wow.” It will be transformational – true icing on the cake. We’re meeting with our landscape architect this morning. I can hardly believe we’re finally “there.”

Stay tuned!!