ding dong

Well here's the truth, we have a door bell that doesn't work at all. I don't know when this happened or if the people before us disconnected for a reason unknown (crazy dog, annoying noise, etc) or if one day the door bell just stopped working... all I know is that it surely doesn't work now.

This isn't a post to tell you how we got the doorbell to start working - hopefully one day we will be able to figure that out - but instead how we made the inside pieces a little more bearable to look at day in and day out!

When we moved in, the door bell was exposed in the hallway with no cover. After looking through all the closets and basement shelves, we did find the cover but it was discolored just like the thermostat we just replaced.

We figured that it was a silly thing to have missing but also silly to re-buy since the one we found in the house was perfectly useful, but unfortunately suffered from being the wrong color.

Nothing a little paint can't fix!

In retrospect, we should have taken a picture against something white because the cover doesn't look that bad here, but you'll have to believe us that it was ugly! Lindsey just used white acrylic paint and a sponge brush to paint over the plastic cover. It took about three coats for it to be smooth, without streaks.

Here you can see the difference between the top that Lindsey already painted and the original color on the sides.  She was using some old mail for her drop cloth since sometimes she says her actual drop cloth creates more of a mess than it's worth.

After three coats it was looking mighty fine and dried very quickly because she used acrylic paint; we always suggest going with acrylic for quick and easy projects - cuts drying time in half!

Once the cover was dry, all we had to do was hang it back on the wall. It simply hangs on the black chime box (as seen in the first picture) so it was no trouble at all to hang. Boy, what a nice change for the chime to be "hidden" on the wall instead of an eye-sore.

So simple and free, our favorite type of project!!!

Just a simple task that changes a wall.

Until next time, Rob and Lindsey