Oh Christmas Door

Alternate Title: Another Year, Another Weird Idea from the Monroe's

Remember last year's Christmas "tree" from THIS post? Yeah, a tripod and some lights was just enough to wet my appetite for something more creative in our apartment at the holidays.

Again, we have many reasons to not have a tree:
Real: Expensive, Anny is allergic to pretty much any cut conifers, too.
Fake: It's fake, and takes up a lot of storage.

This year we were inspired by a Home Depot commercial, of all things. (HERE, if you have not seen it.) I had thought all year about just cutting a piece of plywood into the shape of a tree. I kept putting it off because I could not figure out a few aspects, and I'm glad that I did. We ended up thinking outside of the box once we saw that commercial, and really like what we ended up with.

We started by going to the local ReStore, the retail outlet for Habitat for Humanity. We ended up getting a folding closet door for $10 and a partially used gallon of paint for $5, which just happened to be the perfect green for Christmas! (By partially used I mean that there was maybe 1/2 cup missing out of the gallon of paint - it is incredibly full, even after finishing our project.)

Without further delay, here is what we did:

Started by taking out the slats from the closet door. Since we are in an apartment and I don't want to risk the white carpet becoming stained, I did this in the basement near our neighbors storage area:

With Abby's help, of course, I cleaned the door on both sides from top to bottom. She insisted on her spray bottle, her own washcloth and the most helpful thing for the really dirty part, the scrubber from Ikea.

Abby helped me paint, too. The proof is in the hair, right before Abby's second bath and hair washing of the day last week:

I finished up painting the rest of the door one night after she went to bed, which made it both easier and a bit less messy. I also put on the first coat of paint on the slats. Since we knew we would not be using all of them back on the door, I only painted about half. Good thing, since I broke four in the putting-back-on process (after breaking four or five during break-down) and we still have extras to spare.

I drilled pilot holes in the one of the not-painted slats to use to keep everything in order. We decided on four holes across to allow space for little ones to fit side by side, or to spread them out across the whole slat.

With the piloted hole, it made it easy for Abby to help in that part, too!

Here is the freshly painted door, before the slats:

Here it is with the slats. I was goofing off when I put the red bag on the light. (Which is to say that I like it and Anny did not, so it becomes my goofing off!) We put one into every fourth hole - made for even spacing to accommodate all sizes of ornaments:

Once we added the lights (string of 70 LED's - low power use, too!) around the edge and hung our ornaments along the slats just as we had planned! We sectioned things off, sort of. Presidential Ornaments on the top left, memory-based stuff on the top right and less-easily-broken ones on the bottom.

Like I said, we're all really happy with the door! Storage will be a snap, too. Someone at work suggested that we could leave it up year round and just hang pictures or such. We are not sure about that, but it is on the table now!

Apartment Living

I've told you that we live in an apartment, right? We are up on the third floor of a corner unit and it makes for good stuff most of the time:

We save on energy costs because of the shared space
We do not have to shovel when it snows, or deal with water issues when it rains
Do you know how much cheaper it is to have Renters Insurance instead of Homeowners?

We lucked into a great place with lots of space, and a friend from church that helped us find the place too. Since I've blogged about how much we love this place before, I wanted to point out that not everything about living in an apartment is great for us.

1 - There are smokers that live below us, and that sucks. Now that winter is over, we are starting to notice the smoke more again, since windows are open. The worst part is that when we had windows open for a week it seems that the smoke built up in the duct work, so when we turned the air back on it took two days to get rid of that stench. Ugh.

2 - The third floor is fun for lots of stuff, but some times it would be SO much nicer to just walk right in from the sidewalk to the front door. Add a preschooler who is sometimes deathly afraid of stairs you can see through and sometimes it's downright miserable. I am just really hopeful that none of us ever sprains or break anything while we live here, or it with be unbearable!

3 - While it is nice to not have to be responsible for issues around here like when the sink stops up, we also have to know that sometimes we won't get the immediate reaction of calling a plumber ourselves. Two weeks ago we had a bad clog and had to wait for Monday to roll around because I forgot to call on Friday! We did just enough dishes to get by in the bathroom sink. Also makes you think about how many pans and such you use when you have to be mindful about how much washing needs done.

4 - (mostly from Anny, who opts to do 100% of the laundry) We do not have laundry facilities in our place, and we live on the third floor. I finally convinced Anny that we could leave the laundry soap and such in the car to ease some of the weight up and down. It was a really big issue when Abby got stomach-sick a couple of months back, but we're managing. Once we have fun-money again I think we might look into laundry service, but that's several years off.

We love living in the apartment, and now that spring is here we can see our neighbors again and have fun in the big yard! Good times.