Well, y’all, the weather here in central Texas has thwarted my plans. I started working much earlier than usual yesterday, determined to get all of those final small tasks finished so that I could spend the afternoon on prepping the cedar porch boards for stain. I still needed to finish the wood filler on the screw holes and then give the whole porch one final, quick sanding before the first coat of pine tar/linseed oil could be applied. I had high hopes that I’d get that first coat on either last night or today.
The weather had other plans for me. When I went inside for lunch, it started pouring down rain. My plans were ruined. And it didn’t just delay me one day. It’s cloudy and looks like it’s going to rain again today. And there’s rain in the forecast for the rest of the week. Here’s the bad news. I can’t just jump right in and stain the porch on the first sunny day we have. It will need to be sunny, dry, and hot for a couple of days so that those cedar boards (which have already been sanded and soak up rain water) can be thoroughly dry before the stain goes on. So at this point, that final project on my front porch makeover is delayed indefinitely. To say that I’m disappointed would a huge understatement. I can’t even express to you how frustsrating it is to get to the very last project on my front porch makeover and be delayed indefinitely because of the weather — weather that is very uncharacteristic for central Texas in July.
But obviously, I have no control over that, so I just have to go with it. The sun reappeared mid-afternoon yesterday, and although everything was soaked, I was still determined to get something done. So I decided to tackle a project that has been on my list for a very long time.
When we originally had the new siding put on our house and then had the house painted, all of the vertical trim boards on the corners were painted white. But because our house isn’t all siding, and it’s very wide, and half of the house is stone, those vertical trim boards painted white looked really odd to me. I painted the vertical trim on the porch in the house color — Sherwin Williams Agreeable Gray — very early on, and then when we had the carport finished and painted, I had them paint the vertical corner trim on the back in the gray instead of white. And when I had my workshop built, they wanted to paint those vertical corner pieces white, but I insisted on gray instead to match the house.
That left these two vertical corner trim pieces on the front of my studio which were still white. These were literally the only two left on the whole house that were white, and they looked so out of place. Painting that trim gray has been on my list of things to do for years now.
So yesterday, after the rain stopped, I decided to finally check this project off of my list. I think it looks so much better in the gray.
Of course, it’ll look even better when I finally get those window flower boxes built and installed under the windows (another project that has been on my list for a long time now) and get some landscaping around the studio. I’m really hoping to get to those projects in the fall. But for now, at least that corner trim isn’t fighting for attention in bright white.
When I finished that, I turned my attention to the bedroom exterior door. We had this door installed during the bedroom remodel because, for my own peace of mind, I wanted a door in our bedroom for quick and easy egress in case of emergency. If it were just me in the house, a window would have been fine. But there’s no way I could get Matt out of the house through a window, so I rest easier with a door in the room, but the only option was to put the door on the front of the house. I really love the look of the door from inside our bedroom.
But the outside is a mess. In order to add the framing for the door, they had to cut through the stone, and then the only option (for them) was to add Hardi board trim around the door. I started painting it before I started working on the front porch, but then I stopped for some reason (probably the weather) and never came back to it until yesterday, so this is what it looks like right now.
Obviously, we still need steps. That’s another project that is on my list, and I plan to do that in the fall as well. Right after the door was installed, I had ChatGPT do a few mockups for me of what this door could look like. One of them included shutters on the door. I liked this option because it would hide the trim. And until yesterday, this was the direction I was heading with this door.
But I have gone back and forth in my mind over the shutter idea. I like that it carries the blue shutter color over to that portion of the house. I also like that it makes the door blend in with the windows rather than treating it as a front door. I do plan for this door to stay white instead of painting it in the pink color that I have on the front door and studio door. I don’t want this door grabbing too much attention from the front view of our house.
With that in mind, I also really like this ChatGPT mockup. It’s simpler and less attention-grabbing. And I can still bring the blue to this end of the house with some flower pots.
But you can see the problem. Look how nice the stone looks around the door on that mockup compared to what I have to work with. I just can’t get past the wide Hardi trim around the door. Honestly, I hate it. And while I know I could just paint it gray and move on, I also know that I will never be satisfied with that.
I want the door to look like this…
I just used my photo editing software to do that quick mockup to show the difference between what I have now and what it would look like with stone in place of the Hardi trim. Look how much cleaner and nicer and more intentional it looks!
And now that I’ve seen it, I won’t be satisfied until this door looks like that. So I came up with a plan, headed to Home Depot to purchase everything I need to make this happen, and I got started on it yesterday evening. This is going to be another DIY concrete faux stone project, but this time, it won’t require the use of silicone molds or anything like that. If my plan works out, it will be a much easier (and much faster) project than my porch skirting. I’ll share the details as soon as I’ve made some progress. And who knows? It could end up a complete DIY fail, and I may just have to put the Hardi trim back on and live with it. But I won’t be satisfied until I’ve at least tried my plan. So stay tuned for more details on that!
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Addicted 2 Decorating is where I share my DIY and decorating journey as I remodel and decorate the 1948 fixer upper that my husband, Matt, and I bought in 2013. Matt has M.S. and is unable to do physical work, so I do the majority of the work on the house by myself. You can learn more about me here.