Making a house…a home.

At what point does a house become a home?

For us, and this house, it felt like home before we bought it…but that’s not really it. We still are using a lot of the furniture that came with it. Some of it is still organized the same way.

At what point then, did we feel it was really ours?

There are subtle differences in the next two pictures (NOT the stalking pumpkins!) that directly relate to the issue for us…

Before...

After

No, it’s not that we shed the shade of lime-puke green (left door) for the pepto-bismal pink (right door)…or any of the other amazing colors we scraped through to get that far.

It’s the hardware. The locks. The fact that we can close the door normally. The fact that the room is now weather-tight.

It seems silly, but it was when we no longer needed to padlock the back door, and could open and close…and lock it normally, that we felt we had made her ours.

We have a real door. With real hardware…that we can go in and out of. Dried in and nearly weatherproof.

Installing the mortise latches for the dead side

Drilled for the deadbolt

We are going with a combination of old-fashioned Victorian mortise locks, which the door is cut for, along with a deadbolt for security as the skeleton keys just don’t cut it on today’s world.

We think it will look just fine, maintain the Victorian “attitude” of the house (especially once I clean up the knob surrounds and other hardware), and function even better.

Hardware installed

We also got the threshold installed. It makes this door easily as weatherproof as any in the house…

Still to come, weather-stripping and sweeps…but we are holding out till we get them stripped, primed, and painted. The right door (outside) is nearly stripped.

Oh, and I have three cracked panels of glass to replace as well…once I get enough paint off the door to tell just which side they come out of!

CUAgain,
Daniel Meyer