Desperate Times, Desperate Measures (our latest projects)

Sometimes your dreams have to take a backseat to reality. When I saw this house, I saw the potential, and thought, "a new door here, a new light there, a new kitchen...and voila! A beautiful home!" But reality is we don't have the money to do it all right now. So here are our improvisations!

Doors: I hate the front door. We looked into getting a new one, but the cheapest we could find that would really work was over $2500, so we decided to wait. Also, all of the interior doors were dark wood, and all of the closet doors are the greenish-tannish aluminum. Reality is, we cannot afford to replace them right now. So the next best thing? White paint. I didn't really have before pics, but you can imagine what they looked like. Here is a pic of one door in the process (I found it took 3 coats to really make it look right):

And here it is finished:This is a closet with an aluminum door that a few coats of paint helped out:Front door before: And front door after. I'm still trying to decide if I like this or not. I saw a door very similar to this at Cove Fort (of all places!) and liked the look, so I thought I'd try it. Why not? I hate the door anyway, it can't get any worse, right? At first I painted it all white with the tan blocks...but it was just too much white. So I used the green I'd used in other rooms and I like it better. It's still not my mahogany doors with leaded glass, but it'll do for now.This is the overall entry before. Ignore the mess and boxes!

Here is Doug working on the paint:
And here is the finished entry, other than the chandelier (which is kind of...well...awful). We have the new light, but the ladder we borrowed for the paint didn't work for the chandelier, so we need to find another one before we can complete that project.

Here is the Tiffany light that Doug installed above the kitchen table: And how is this for fancy? We tore out the cabinet here (accidently, oops!) but can't afford the new cabinets we want right now...so in the meantime this lovely piece of fabric tacked up with push pins at least covers the mess. I'm so glamorous!