baubles

We've been keeping the purse strings pretty tight around here while saving for the wrap-around porch build.  Although we still religiously check craigslist and estate sales, things like ebay and salvage yards have been strictly off-limits.  Luckily, I could start a salvage yard of my own out of my basement, and given it's state of utter chaos, wandering around down there has become a bit of an adventure.  Typically, this amounts to finding most everything I need if I just root around down there long enough - and knowing what I have somewhat determines which new projects I start.  However, sometimes my memory fails me, forcing me to actually buy pretties like these...

Antique screen door hinges, I'm a sucker for the spirals...

We had a bit of a Memorial Day party here, which prompted me to begin the EPIC painting of the house by starting with the back porch.  And since huge projects are never quite huge enough, I decided I'd begin fixing up the door, transom and screen door while I was at it - under the mistaken impression that I would have everything I needed to gussy it up somewhere in the house (really, just a crowbar made a huge difference).  Well, I had most everything, but it turns out the antique screen door hinges I had didn't match one another and were lacking in the aesthetics department.  Ebay was more than happy to come to the rescue...

One purchase however led to another, and now this month I've already bought hinges, sikaflex, a new dripless ergonomic caulk gun, wheels for my scaffolding, two new tires, and some moldings.  Ouch.  Luckily, I didn't have to buy these...

antique brass screen door knob and latch

All this, and the screen door still will never fit in the opening properly.  Oh well...

And once the floodgates opened, there was nothing to stop me from buying this lovely doormat when some wonderful person posted it on Pinterest (but why oh why doesn't anyone make nice mats for double doors?).

He never learned the art of being welcoming...