What the hell was I thinking?

Sometimes I can do things around the house myself. Sometimes I need an extra pair of hands. Painting and re-hanging my bathroom cabinets is something I really should've gotten help with. As with most home projects, I needed motivation. My big motivation here was getting my house reappraised to try and prove to my mortgage company that I have enough equity to get rid of the PMI. I made the appt Thursday for the guy to come on Monday night. If I'd thought more clearly, I would have scheduled it for later in the week. Come Friday, I realized just how many little projects around the house I wanted to get done before the appraiser came. Would it make a difference in the price? Probably not. But, sometimes I just get into these moods were common sense doesn't matter. I almost didn't go to game night Friday cause I knew I had a lot to do, but I went anyways. It's always so much fun and worth the time.

Besides painting the bathroom cabinets I also needed to do yard work and some other paint projects. My parents came over at 9am on Saturday. I had started weeding the front lawn around 8:30 and already had a fairly full bag. My dad mowed my back lawn and my mom cleared out the flower beds in the back. That freeze in January killed almost everything. I had some really cool plants back there too! I do have this one red flower that's been there for almost two years. Nothing kills that sucker! It's pretty too...maybe I should just plant that everywhere. I filled about three large bags full of weeds from my front yard....yeah I hadn't done yard work in about three months. Shut up! I don't live in an HOA! My yard can look as crappy as I want! My neighbors still like me cause I'm nice and sweet and don't throw loud parties. We did yard work for three hours, I bought my parents lunch from Panda Express, and then they left. Then I got started on the paint projects.

Now, when I say 'paint the bathroom cabinets' I'm not talking about a small bathroom. No no no. It's long with two sinks. The total was 6 drawers and 15 cabinet doors. That's right FIFTEEN. The real reason I'm painting the cabinets is that I wanted to change the hardware. The previous owners had dubious taste and had used gold fixtures everywhere. ugh. quite fugly. I found these cute black/silver leaf handles at Lowes and matching hinges. This was all almost two years ago. When I got home to change out the hardware I found out that even though the hinges LOOKED the same, they were actually SLIGHTLY different...enough to give me a 1/2 inch gap where I had two doors touching. What the hell? My only alternative was to take the doors off, put wood putty in the holes, sand them down, repaint, and redrill the holes so the doors would be closer together. So, for almost two years my bathroom has been half old hardware and half new hardware with one door just leaning against the corner (that was supposed to be my motivation to fix everything...I just got used to it leaning there!)
But with the motivation of the reappraisal, I was all gung-ho to get it done. I've painted tons of things. How hard can it be? Well, painting the doors was a bitch. Saturday was absolutely beautiful and I really enjoyed being in the garage and feeling the weather. I painted the drawers first and a few of the doors. Sunday a huge glorious thunderstorm came in bringing humidity and moisture. The damn paint wouldn't dry. I ended up taking the doors into one of my guest rooms and turning the fan on. What a bitch. All in all the paint job is not to my liking. I really did a piss poor job. I used a brush and a guess I really should have used a roller. There are some spots where the paint dribbled a bit and I probably should have sanded all the old paint off cause some areas were pitted. When it comes down to it, oh well, I'm the only one that will notice. The color I chose was lighter than I thought it'd be too. I was hoping to use the same color in the kitchen, but I want something a tad darker. Ok, now that everything was painted, the holes were filled in, sanded, repainted (and that part turned out really good!) it was time to rehang the doors. I drilled little holes cause I didn't want to split the wood when I put the screws in. The first set turned out perfectly. I thought, hey this isn't that hard! I should've kept my mouth shut. The next four sets of doors came out horribly. One set was crooked so I had to re-drill the holes, one set kept rubbing on the bottom so I got out my little mouse sander and just sanded the hell out of it. The other set needed sanding too. God damnit. It probably would have been good at the re-hanging stage to have someone hold the door steady while I drilled, but I thought it'd be ok. And to top it all off, somehow I was one hinge-set short. What the hell? I know I had the right count when I bought them a long long long time ago. I thought hey no problem, I'll go to Lowes Monday after work, pick up a set and hang the door before the guy gets there. Well gues what? The fuckers at Lowe's don't carry that color of hinge anymore. They still had the handle, but not the hinge. I even went to two different ones. I ended up buying a plain black one (the others are black and silver flecked) and at least you can't really tell the difference. I also painted the bottom trim (kick board?) in the bathroom which has been bugging me since I painted that room and left the trim the old icky yellowed paint. Now it's a shiny white and looks much better. Hell, I even washed my windows and I've NEVER washed my windows. (ok I didn't wash all of them...just the bay window in the kitchen and the front windows in the dining room...wanted the house to look presentable). I'll find out next week what he appraised it for. He said having a brand new roof will really help. I'm crossing my thumbs that it's high enough.

Now I'm so not looking forward to painting the kitchen. I'm really going to have to take my time with that. Maybe next year.......