Mowing the grass

Jeff is pretty happy with his new toy, no it's not the remote controlled helicopter he has been bugging me about for the last 5 years (one day...), but his new Fiskars Stay Sharp Reel Mower. No noisy, gas powered lawn mower for him. I was quite surprised when he announced a few months ago that he wanted a reel mower, commonly referred to as the push mower. After looking around at several mowers he chose the Fiskars, finding one at Home Depot, but it didn't come with a grass catcher, and I didn't want the kids traipsing grass clippings into the house. That's when I declared 'Amazon will have one!', so we went online and ordered the mower and for an extra $30 a grass catcher.

Well today was the day it was delivered to our mailbox below the 49th parallel. So like all great wives I left work an hour early and headed down to the US to pick it up. I had the foresight to print off a couple of documents that I had been procrastinating on editing for the past few days (you'd be surprised how organized my area of the office is becoming) and away I went. Fortunately there wasn't too long a wait to cross, I was able to edit one of the documents on the way down, and after picking up the mower, overfilling my car with cheap gas (whoops) and heading back north, I was able to edit the second one waiting to get back into Canada. I had to laugh while sitting at the Peace Arch crossing, a couple flocks of Canada Geese flew over the border lanes, they must have had Nexus as they just kept flying and didn't stop to present their passports ;)

It wasn't long and I was pulling into the driveway, just after Jeff had shown up with the kids. First thing he said to me "did you get my lawn mower?" Sure did honey! So for the next hour Jeff put the mower together and proceeded in successfully mowing our almost 1/4 acre yard. It was so nice to hear the peace and quiet of our new neighbourhood. No noisy, stinky, gas powered beast to interrupt the tranquility of the tree frogs.

It should be white.

I like white molding, door casing and doors. Brown trim and doors not so much. 

Brown Door

Brown Bi -fold Door

Eew yuck!

And because I like painting so much hmm... the brown had to go. So I painted them and it was actually a pretty simple thing to do, took a couple of afternoons, it could have taken more but I DID NOT WANT TO SAND THEM. So I didn't. I was a little weary of painting without sanding at first but after reading a few other blogs I found on the world wide web I decided that I could do it without sanding. So I did.

Here is what I did:

I cleaned the doors and door casing with a damp cloth to get rid of all the dust from construction. I then applied 2 coats of this oil based primer:

This stinky stuff was the key ingredient here, it allowed me to prime without sanding. I did it inside, on the floor of the master bedroom, the one room currently without new floor on it, with the windows open. I would suggest you do it outside. My head wasn't very happy with me. I applied the 2 coats with a small foam roller, approx 6 inches wide. Foam worked best as it didn't splatter the paint nor leave any paint brush streaks. I left 1-2 hours between each coat of the primer. 

24 hours later I came back to paint it all the lovely Mountain Peak White by Benjamin Moore, although the paint was actually Behr Premium Plus Ultra Semi Gloss Enamel. This time I used a regular roller, same as what you would paint your walls with. For the door casings I used a regular old paint brush.

Now when you paint over brown and go lighter it gets uglier before it gets pretty, so don't freak out if your first coat looks like this:

See the streaks and the brown showing through? Not a big deal. After 24 hours I went back and did a second coat of the enamel. 

See, no ugly brown streaks! Here is the same ugly brown door from above, but now it's Mountain Peak White. Looks much better.

I got the paints from Home Depot, as well as these nifty passage door handles to be installed over the next few days:

Grandpa and I are also painting the molding the same shade of white. Can't wait for that to go in.