getting crafty with power tools
It's a nice day here today. Like, really nice. Like, 70 degrees for the first time since October, nice. It's days like today that make me love where I live. Country roads, take me home :)
Today's post is a little different than anything I've ever done/written about before. So bear with me. Here we go.
So my family built this house in 2001. Since the initial painting and such, not a lot has been done as far as the exterior goes, with the exceptions of building a back deck, building a back deck again after it collapsed on Valentine's Day 2011, replacing siding, and replacing our roof.
ps-- my nice camera is at Roger's house so all of these photos were taken with my phone. sorry about the quality :/
So, naturally, with all of the tough winters we've faced, our doors have seen better days.
My mom and I decided that we wanted our house to have a little pop of color, to brighten it up and make it look more cheerful. And while the color is still being debated, today I started to prepare the door for it's new look.
But not without my trusty sidekick, of course!
So, like I was saying. Our front door has definitely seen better days.
Being a non-wood door, it was beginning to rust, so before we painted, we needed to sand that down so that paint wouldn't chip and wear off as easily.
Now, I want to make it clear that the last time I sanded anything was in 8th-grade technology class. It's been a long time. But I did remember that you should use course-grit sand paper first to really sand it down and then a finer paper to make it silky smooth.
So I started by hand-sanding the rust spots with a really course-grit paper. I believe I used a 36-grit paper. We had 24-grit, but that looked like a little much.
When I first started, I thought I ruined the door. See all those scratches? How hideous.
But there was no turning back, so I forged on. Next up: The sander. We have this baby:
The Black and Decker 1/4 Sheet Finishing Sander. Not that anyone cares. But that's what we have.
So for this, I used a 60-grit course sandpaper-- mostly because that's what was already on the sander. (I told you. I'm a total amateur.)
It actually worked pretty awesome. To run your hand across the finished surface, it's pretty smooth. Like, I can barely tell the difference between the non-sanded and sanded parts. But here's what it looked like when I was done:
And the whole door:
Not too shabby, huh? We'll see what my mom thinks when she gets home from work (ha). She's supposed to be bringing some sort of Rust-Oleum that we can put over it to protect it and seal it in before we prime/paint.
Speaking of paint, while I'd like to go for something like this, my mom is thinking something more like this*.
But that's it for today. Hopefully we'll get another beautiful day sometime soon so that we can finish this project up! :)
*-- I try to link back to original sources whenever I can, but for these I couldn't them or they wouldn't open :(
pps-- I've run into some hiccups when it came to the video I've been editing from our trip to Memphis. I promise I haven't forgotten about it, just mildly frustrated about the whole process at the moment.
