Like this sign that hangs on the front of our house. My husband is a Navy veteran and so I proudly display this as a reminder of his service to our country.
And years ago I had purchased this little bell. It reminded me of the farmhouse bell that was hung at my grandparent's farm.
A few years ago when I purchased a small patio set, I purchased one with an oiled bronze finish and brown woven seats.
I didn't even think about my pot rack until I was taking photographs of the finished projects with oiled bronze components! My lovely pot rack that we installed a couple of years ago to hold my stainless steel pots and pans and my ever-growing collection of cast iron cookware.
Earlier this spring I decided that I needed to do something with all of the exterior doors. They are all unfinished, steel doors. In an ugly gray finish. Two years ago we decided on the colors for the house - of which one of the accent colors was a charcoal. I was wandering in Wal-Mart's spray paint aisle looking at paint options for the doors when I saw the metallic collection - with an oiled bronze color. I decided to give it a try. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a "before" picture, but here is another door from the house in the same gray steel finish.
Not the best looking door. And all the wear and tear and fingerprints on it appear to be dirty brown and yucky color. This made the oiled bronze a good color choice since it can hide a lot of the wear and tear that our household puts on doors. The first door I painted was the front door. And I love...love...love how it turned out!
One door down and four more to go. I actually bought the cans of spray paint needed to paint the rest of the exterior doors, but they got used on a surprise Mother's Day present - a front porch swing! I have wanted a porch swing ever since we bought this house...in 2011. Yes, projects take us a very long time to complete. We are not the Turtle Construction Company like the Duggars; we are the Slow-as-Snails Renovation Company! My goal is to have all the projects done before the house is paid in full or all the kids move out!
I was more than happy to use all my cans of paint for the doors fixing up this swing. I really enjoy sitting out there on a nice, warm day enjoying cuddling with my quilt while reading a good book. There is nothing that compares to it.
In addition to painting the exterior doors, I decided to paint the interior doors as well. We plan on replacing the cheaper, hollow core doors with solid wood ones at some point. However, I have to live with these doors for right now. It took me some time - and cleaning - to realize that these doors were purchased pre-primed and then never painted by the home owner that installed them. I would try to clean them and the finish would turn a disgusting shade of gray. As usual, I forgot to take a before picture, but there are a lot of these doors in the house - all identical in style and type.
This picture does not do justice to how incredibly disgusting this door really is. Just trust me. It is nasty. Well, Wal-Mart was selling on clearance Almond Enamel paint. This was a nice, high gloss and easily washable paint that I thought would work perfectly for the doors. Cleaning them has been really easy. I tackled the dirtiest and nastiest door on the first floor - the bathroom door. This door gets a lot of handling, especially when we are working in the garden. Lots of dirty fingerprints cover just about every available surface of this room. I chose the almond color because I felt that it was a nice, warm color compared to the dirty gray. Plus, with the kids, a bright stark white just would not work. And I did not want dark colored doors as I want our rooms to be as large, bright and airy as possible.
I also chose the almond color because I thought it showcased the oiled bronze handsets beautifully. A true complement of finishes. Doesn't that look so nice?
This past week we had two unplanned projects land in our lap - a broken toilet and a leaking kitchen faucet. The plastic handle on the toilet snapped. I temporarily fixed it by tying a string to the chain that controls the flapper thing. We have really hard water so the guts of the toilet were in pretty bad shape after about 7 years of use. A week of flushing the toilet with the string seemed to have skewed the flapper position as well. My husband decided that we would upgrade and replace the inserts. Since we had to buy a new handle anyway, I chose one with a - you guessed it - oiled bronze finish.
Doesn't that look nice? It is such an upgrade from the original cheap plastic handle. Plus, this is the toilet that has had the seat replaced - not just once; not twice; but three times! I don't think the problem is us. I think it is the quality of the plastic thingamajiggy that secures the seat to the toilet. We keep breaking those silly plastic things!
We discovered that the kitchen sink was leaking really bad. Some of the plastic gaskets had broken and the caulk was missing from around three-fourths of the sink. We had replaced the faucet about three years ago for the same reason. Instead of choosing a good, quality faucet, we went with the cheapest option we could find. It was more of an emergency and necessity. However, this time, I was blessed that my husband agreed we should invest in one of better quality. We were double blessed that Menards was having a nice sale on kitchen faucets! We were able to pick up our new faucet at quite a steep discount!
The faucet itself is higher up than the one that we replaced. This will make filling the watering cans, canning pots, and other pots and pans much, much easier. I also took the time to remove what was left of the old, moldy and disintegrating caulk with some nice, new caulk. No more leaks and a nice finish to the faucet.
Now that we have recognized that I really like the oiled bronze finish, we are going to slowly integrate it into the house as we update, repair, and replace different things. So what types of finishes do you like or have you found that you use in your house on a regular basis?
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