Something Old, Something Blue

Every time I glance at our backyard, the peeling paint of the garage rears its ugly head and glares back at me.  Check out this photo from when we first  bought the house.

While we’ve trimmed the tree and cleaned up the junk in the yard, the garage itself looks much the same.  I’ve tried to ignore it.  I mean, it took living here for well over two years before I finally cleaned the dirt and bird poop off the window of the garage door! 

And then I sold something on Craigslist.

The buyer needed to get into our garage to see the item…and I was totally mortified.  That’s when I snapped and decided a little facelift was in order.  Since school was starting and a baby was growing, this normally quick project took almost a month to complete with all the prep work, priming, and painting between Liam’s naps.  But she’s finally done—yay! 

I’d really love to paint the entire garage, but to be perfectly honest (hmmm…that rings of Eugene from good old Adventures in Odyssey—anyone?), that’s just a little more bite than I can chew right now.  So I tackled the next best thing—the door.  I have a slight obsession with old doors.  They have all these great features, but sometimes they are so old that their lovely attributes get lost beneath the wrinkles.  Thank goodness for power sanders and paint!  While it took some serious elbow grease to get beyond the grime of this door, it was worth it. 

Before…

After…

She’s definitely a far cry from perfect, but she’s cleaner and brighter, giving the entire garage a much needed lift.  In addition to painting her blue to match our front door, we spray painted the hardware oil-rubbed bronze

and replaced several of the wood slats on the inside of the door.  See how they’re all rotted out? 

We scraped them clean with a chisel and then picked up some thin plywood from Home Depot (I think it was 1/4 inch).  We had them make some cuts in the store and then finished off the rest of them at home with a circular saw, since HD won’t make rip cuts.  Then we used wood glue to lock them in place, finishing off the edges with caulk.  After a coat of Zinsser’s oil-based primer and two coats of paint, we had a new-to-us door on our hands. 

Maybe someday we’ll replace our garage door with something new—or maybe we’ll snag a good replacement at the Restore.  Until then, it feels good to have restored a bit of life into our garage without spending much moolah.  In fact, I think we only bought the wood and the glue, as we had everything else on hand.  It works for us.