New door and chandelier at the Cottage! 12/08/09

I know it's silly to get excited about such small things but if your front door was 100 years old, you'd understand. Our old door was so out of plumb that you could hardly lock it anymore! And the window that had been broken out of it before we bought the cottage had been replaced with a bit of plywood. There was a 1 inch gap at the bottom and everytime I left the place, I had to pray that I could slam the door just right in order for it to lock. One time I slammed my finger in it and stood there crying as my son prepared to catch me as I fainted from PAIN! But I digress...



Here is the old door. I painted the little plywood piece blue just to make it tolerable. In the 2nd pic you can see light coming through the crack where it was screwed to the door! Ugh.

Look at this photo from the inside. At the top of the jamb you can see that it was practically 3" off square! No wonder I could never get it shut! The workers had to remove the original trim but were able to get it back up. You can see they had a little trouble with the plaster/lathe coming off on the left but they patched it pretty well.


Inside view. The new locks work like a dream. I'm very happy. ('Scuse the unpainted section of the floor.)

Check out my chandelier! I bought it at a garage sale for $2. It had no crystals and it was all brass so I took it apart, rewired it and painted it white. I bought an old table lamp for $10 that had aurora borealis crystals and used them for the chandelier. They are awesome!

Look how they sparkle like tiny rainbows!

I bought 2 ceiling medallions at the Escondido AMVETS for about $5. (Try to fit THAT in your carry-on luggage!) You can see I used the smaller one here. The center hole was a bit small for the electrical box so I just jig-sawed it bigger and then glued the thing up there with that super-caulking-industrial-glue-stuff. It ain't goin' nowhere!