Work on the house continues on, but here are a few pictures of changes that happened months ago. Dad put up new porch lights for me since there was just one and it blinded the peep-hole so you couldn't see who was standing on the porch....not the best design considering there isn't a window there to look out of either. Yes, the street numbers in the picture are being held up with tape, but they had fallen and Dad used the tape to hold them in place while the other adhesive dried. Of course, we've had so many storms that the numbers have taken a beating and now the 1 and the 3 have fallen off......now my address is just 36. One of these days I'll get a real address that stays in place. My favorite part of this picture is the little patch of flowers that you can see in the bottom right corner. The elderly woman that lived here before me stuck a whole bunch of silk flowers in the dirt so it looked like she had flowers. I honestly had never thought of that as a quick fix to add curb appeal (but don't be fooled....it wasn't appealing)!
Have I mentioned lately that my dad is amazing? He built me a mantel! My fireplace was pretty boring before, but he built this mantel that is perfect and really makes it look nice. The box on the hearth is the fireplace screen that I will use later, but first I need to take the brass fireplace cover off and clean the bricks. I'm so excited to have a fireplace this winter! I really could have used it last year when we had so many snow and ice storms.
Dad has also put a lot of time into the kitchen. I really didn't like my cabinets because they were stuck in the 80's and thankfully Dad agreed that it was going to be difficult to sand and paint the current cabinet design. So, he cut the dated trim off the cabinets and made new trim to update the look of the cabinets while using the original wood doors. Pretty clever! Here are a few pictures of the work in process and the first coat of primer on the doors. They looked pretty funny for a while since the original cabinet was beige but the new trim was brown. Don't worry...they're white now.
