red

The funny thing about summers post-college is that life never really slows down.  If anything, with Rob picking up two on campus jobs and my supervisor off to a family wedding in the middle of freshman orientations, we're busier now than during the school year, hence the lax posting of last weekend's whirlwind everything.

The first order of business last weekend [aside from general catching up and whatnot] was replacing the front door.  The storm door has been broken for a while.  The trim was falling off of the old door.  And, most recently, the weather stripping at the bottom of the door was becoming so deteriorated that we had to slam the door to get it shut or risk coming home to a still locked but open front door, not to mention the fact that opening it again required a well-placed kick.  Pete was not amused by this development and quickly steered clear of the door when it needed to be opened.

The new door, however, is steel and locks the way it's supposed to and doesn't have an ugly painted over window.

"High drama" begins.

It is also now red, though the paint company has termed this particular shade "high drama," much to our great amusement.  We discovered the hard way though that painting at 6 pm on a 106 degree day in a fanless garage is not the best idea.  The primer that was supposed to be dry-to-the-touch in 30 minutes was drying in about 30 seconds.  Not our idea of fun.  So painting happened gradually over Saturday as we waited for Rob's parents to get into town.

Just our luck, the scheduled day to install the door - when Rob had off work - also coincided with a rather nasty dust storm.  This caused the entire main room of the house to be blanketed with a thick layer of grit and made priming the new trim pieces next to impossible.

The view from the front yard.

Removing the old door.

Work continues.

View through the new door.

Pete is skeptical.

Keeping Pete occupied.

All in all, aside from a few setbacks due to our house prematurely showing its age, the door went in as planned.  It closes and locks and even lets in a little bit of light and, even without the trim painted yet, looks much, much better than the old one did.

"High drama" in action.