I bought six cans of the stuff, ya know.

I'm surprised they didn't card me at the Home Depot when I was buying all of the frost spray cans. I know I must have looked like a 'huffer'.

"Excuse me, where do you sell your paper bags?"

So on to the next frosty-project: The kitchen door transom.



If you remember back, it all started out looking like this POS:

We ended up yanking the whole door and door frame out and rebuilding it from scratch.

We went with a custom built 34" x 80" wood-esque fiberglass door (luckily the day the refrigerator was delivered, the frame was out and we were down to brick, or the fridge would not have made it into the house at all.)

*Note the plastic covering the table in the picture. This is back when the water was still pouring into the house from the roof and the missing box gutter whenever it rained. Ah, memories......

Anyway, we rebuilt the frame for the 34" door, routed out the frame to hold the door, and once it was in place, then took exact measurements for the insulated transom glass. It cost about $60.


Once the transom was caulked and nailed in place with 1/4" quarter round on the inside and out, then we waited two months for me to buy six freaking cans of spray frost.

And, of course, we had to agree on a design.

My first idea was an adorable Latin phrase from my days at Walnut Hills H.S with laurel leaves around it: "Semper in faecibvs sole profvndvm variat" meaning, well, to paraphrase... "always in *it*, the only thing that changes is how deep."

Although that may remain our catchprase, we decided to go with something for profound and meaningful to us both.





The naked stud from Atlas Shrugged.








Again, I used the highly preferred sticky backed paper with the peel off backing instead of the spray adhesive on regular card stock.

I coloured the left and right bay laurel leaves green and blue so that when I cut them out, I'd know which side they went on.

I also numbered them before I cut them out for easier assembly.














Then I covered the walls and door with the obligatory newspaper and then sprayed the transom with three coats of spray, waiting 10 minutes in between each coat and using the time to run outside for a breath of non-huff clean air.

Once it was dry, I used a dry paint brush to wipe off the frosty-dust that gets everywhere.

And then I peeled the stickers off of the glass, sometimes using the tip on an exacto blade to pick up the really stuck edges.... viola.














View from the outside:














You know, I think I'm just avoiding finishing the closet doors.


(if you came here from the Hooked On Houses Blog Party or if you want to check it out, just use this link)

The Closet Doors so far....

OK, I first have to apologize for the earlier rant on the Covington Reuse Center. Yes, I was given a price and it was later not upheld, but I gotta say, you need to know who to talk to. Some guys at the CRC 'get it' others just do not. The one who do not, I assume will not be in their jobs for very long.




In any case, I still wanted the glass divided light doors, but I wasn't going to get all six. At this point, we could only get four. And although we did NOT get the same deal we were offered before, we still got a good deal. I AM happy with what we got at the price we got it at. (It was still cheaper than the second full-rate price, anyway.)

So here's what we got: four true divided light doors, 24" x 82".

A few things of note: 1. They were too tall for the closet AND the sliding door racks we already bought the first go-around.

We needed to cut about 1.5" off of the bottoms of each door.

2. Although they were already primed, they were primed Bright White and needed a semi-gloss antique white paint job.


The glass came covered in plastic, so that after the semi-gloss paint, all I needed to do was cut out the plastic sheets with the paint on top and toss them away. This saved me Soooo much time taping and scraping.

Once the doors were sized and painted, I attached the track to the top of the closet jamb, which I'd just installed-- just enough to that when the doors closed, they'd still be recessed, attached the wheels to the doors, then hung them up.

This is the wheel kit. Relatively simple wheels, a bunch of screws and a door-separator for the bottom of the doors on the floor.

Once I was sure they'd fit, opened and closed ok, then I took them back off the track, laid them down on the bedroom floor and began the taping/newspaper process for spraying ... yup, you guessed it.... the frost spray.


So far I have 2 coats on already, and I'm batting for at least a third.

Here's the most important thing I can mention when spraying doors on the floor.... DON'T DO IT.

Rule #1 completely lost on me. When you spray the frost spray DOWN, it drops little droplets, making polka dot puddles on your glass. It sucks.

I ended up standing all the doors upright, and trying to cover up the blotches with more spray. It's "ok" now, but not great. I may end up scraping off a few panels and starting over.

More pictures to come....

Finally frosting the back door

I admit it, I'm on a window frosting binge.

I've been working on the bedroom closets (another post on the way once that's finished up) and I just finished the back door into the backyard/garden and I'm working on plans for the kitchen door and transom.

The first project was the front door transom. I finished it a while back, but I neglected to take pictures of the process. What I did was decide that I wanted our address in the front door (street side) transom, then spent a few minutes determining what font I wanted to use. Once I had that figured out, I sized out the lettering to fit in our new glass transom, printed the letters and numbers out backwards on sticky adhesive label paper, then cut out the letters and numbers by hand.

Once I had them cut out, I laid them out on the backside of the glass to make sure it would look right, then used blue painters tape to make sure my lines would be straight. That's what I used to set the sticky paper directly on the glass.

The I sprayed glass frosting, let it dry (only takes about 10 minutes) peeled up the sticky paper to make sure I had sprayed enough ( I hadn't) then set on for another coat. After the second coat, I peeled off the sticky papers and viola, it was ready to install in the door frame above the new front door.


But there was still the back door to do, which has been covered with non-descript polka dotted wrapping paper since last November. It was time.

I started my search online for stencils and came across a leafy-buckeye looking one I thought would work out. Once I got DH approval, I started sizing the images and printing them out on card stock.

In retrospect, I would highly recommend using the sticky paper with the peel of back sides like I used on the front door. This plan had me cutting out a bunch of leaves and sticks from the card stock, then spraying the backsides with spray adhesive. Sometimes it worked fine, sometimes the adhesive remained on the door and had to be scraped off and started over.

So here was the original plan:















The coloured printout was the design. (We ended up being a lot more sparing on the laves than the original plan, mostly because my right pointer finger was going numb- and still is-- from cutting out the leaves and sticks with an exacto blade.)

The grey sheet was the materials plan that I resized much larger and cut out from many sheets of card stock.


The cut out leaves were then numbered according to their 'leaf cluster' and placed in envelopes for easy arranging later. When it was time, I arranged each leaf cluster on our living room table to get a general layout. Once I had the spacing, I taped newspapers around the door to protect the walls and floors from overspray from the spray adhesive as well as the frost spray.

I used a rubber glove beacuse the spray ahhesive is a PITA to get off of skin. I sprayed the backs of the cut outs and just started attaching the leaves and the stick cutouts to the glass.

I wanted at least three layers of spray, meaning, I would attach most of the sticks and a few leaves for absolute negative space, then spray a layer of frost. Then I would attach more leaves and sticks, and spray again, then the last batch and that would be it.





It was a plan anyway.

I also thought it would be a cool idea to have 'positive spaces' as well as negative spaces where the leaves would go. This would be done by saving one of the leaf pattern cutouts and taping it in

place and then 'overspraying' so a thick layer of spray would stand out.

As much as the idea seemed great, and I actually did it in two places, it just didn't provide enough contrast. It was kinda boring, actually, but if you're going to uber-subtle, this could work for you, depending on the project.

For me, I ended up scraping the frost spray out with a razor blade, leaving negative space instead.

I actually ended up scraping out a lot more than I had planned, because the contrast for a lot of the door was hard to see from more than 8 feet away. Still, as you get closer, you can see some of the subtle hidden leaves, still in place.






















Here's the positive space leaf that I ended up scraping away below. It was not easy to do, so if you're not sure, I'd just avoid this step.























The final project.


This is the before-the-before the backdoor: Note the 2x6 on the floor that we had to prop between the door and the steps to keep the door shut. ;-)
















Now on to the closet doors!!
And of course, the side door.

Note the looovely polka-dotted holiday wrapping paper.

Ugh.