A Fun Week!

It's been a fun week! Monday we did Joseph in Egypt for FHE and Logan had so much fun playing with the felt board people after the story was over. Sometimes I wonder if he's getting the point behind our FHE lessons, but we keep doing them.

Wednesday we took the car into the shop to have the rear struts and tires replaced. I'm glad we could get that taken care of before the baby is born. The mechanic told us last time we took them in to get it done soon, so better now than have it break down later.

Thursday Dave texted in the afternoon inviting Logan and I to meet him after work. So we made a picnic dinner and jumped on the train heading down town. Logan just loved the train ride, that in itself might have made it worth the trip. Since we drop Dave off on the train about once a week, Logan was so excited to be on the train "like daddy". He loved watching everything zoom by.

We ate our picnic dinner then headed to the Gateway (mall). Logan's favorite part of our roaming was visiting Barnes & Noble. He loves books, and they have a Thomas the Train set. Logan played for at least 45 minutes until we had to drag him away. We also really enjoyed the Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory. Logan chose a green rock candy stick which made a huge mess, but was fun.

Friday we were supposed to start sanding down the front door, but kinda got distracted with relaxing and didn't get around to it. I did get the house cleaned up and everything prepped for Saturday dinner, but that's about it. Boy we regretted that on Saturday!

We woke up early Saturday to start sanding the front door around 9 am. Dave used his electric sander first to get the polyurethane and old stain off while Logan and I mowed the lawn and picked raspberries. Then I started sanding down the trim by hand while Logan played with his cars on the gazebo. We hand sanded until about 3 when we encountered the really intricate trim.

We had to use a chemical stripper for that area. We finally got everything off (and the stripper dried) around 5, put the first coat of stain and ate dinner with the "girl missionaries". We didn't get the stain completely done until 8 pm! We had to let that coat set up for an hour before putting the door back on and called it a night. What a nightmare!

We decided to wait on the polyurethane coating until next weekend. It will take 3 coats since this is an exterior door, and you need to let it set up for 4 hours between coats. So we plan to start that first thing next Saturday and hopefully be able to at least hang the door by the time we go to sleep. Hopefully the door isn't tacky still, but we'll see; it's supposed to take 24 hours to fully cure. I told Dave I can sleep in the hallway and guard the glass door over night if we have to. This was my crazy idea after all!

It's been insane the work we've had to put into this, but it ended up costing us about $50 to do (compared to the $1,000 it would cost to replace with a similar wood door). It looks fabulous and it isn't even done, so I'm glad we did it. Dave decided on a dark brown color this time (the old stain was honey looking) and I love the new look. I just hope it will last for a LONG time. I so don't want to do this again any time soon!