Operation “fix up this house” is still underway, despite the fact that we decided to stay put. We had our house appraised recently to see if our hunch was correct, and unfortunately it was. The appraisal had “terrible market” and “wrong time to sell” written all over it. Ah, such is life. We figured we weren’t immune to the economic downturn, but you can’t hurt a girl for trying, right?
Despite the semi-bad news, we still wanted to do a few easy projects around the house that had been on the list for a good long while. One of these was painting our front door. A super simple project, but something that we couldn’t do during the blistering cold months of winter. Why did we need to paint the front door so badly?
Oh, that’s why. Bleagh. And what’s that odd shaped swoosh of nasty whiteness on the bottom right?
That’s from a slug. A SLUG. One of the very unfortunate side effects of summer in this here neck of the woods are slugs. They hang out on our front stoop and sometimes make their way up onto our door frame (even typing this is making me nauseous) and one time, onto our door. If you’ve ever tried to clean a slug skid mark before, rest assured that I can sympathize with you. They literally DO NOT COME OFF. Not only are slugs disgusting, the “presence” they leave behind is even worse. Moving on.
We picked up a quart of exterior black paint and a mini roller, and got to work on one sunny afternoon. We made a little “doggie barricade” with some dining room chairs to keep the pooch from messing up the paint job, but we barely had to keep Charlie away since the project was so quick. The one coat of paint we applied dried in about 15 minutes, and we used a hair dryer to dry the edges so we could (almost) close the door to keep any dust/bugs out of the house.
What do you know? 15 minutes of our time gave us a door that looked like a million bucks. Well, maybe closer to 100 bucks, but a door without a slug mark is a gold mine in my book. Just check out the close up now.
Ah, slug free. We got such a kick out of our mini project that we decided to paint all of the doors in our house – that’s three total doors with one quart of $5.00 paint. As my husband would say “well, butter my butt and call me a biscuit”.
Yes, ladies, he does use that phrase on a regular basis. And yes, he’s taken. :)
Great job by you and the biscuit.
Love your Dad’s comment by the way!
So your slug description literally made me throw up in my mouth a bit. I have to say I’m glad we don’t have that problem but our house has just a slew of others to deal with so don’t be too jealous (cockroaches anyone?)!
Love the fresh coat of paint on the door. Is there anything that paint can’t fix?! I think not.
Biscuit, huh. I’ll have to remember that. Maybe you could avoid future slug stains by leaving an old lid from a jar full of beer on each side of the door. The slugs are attracted to it and will drown. ( At least that’s what I read one time.) They do leave some nasty slime. Yuck.
I was going to tell you about the beer thing, too. Just be sure to use good beer. (No point in buying cheap stuff, cause you’ll have to drink what you don’t use! The doors look great!