Basement Door Renovation, Pt. 1

It's been a while since I had any posts about fixing up, restoring, or otherwise 'improving' the ol' Crawfish homestead.  As you can see from the pixture on the left, that is about to change.

Not that I haven't done any projects.  There have been a few but nothing worth writing about.  But this one is going to be an adventure so I figured, what the heck.

There is a basement level entrance that is accessed by a set of concrete stairs.  The dreaded Previous Owner put a plywood 'door' over the stairs to keep out water and leaves.  The water part is ok by me, since there is a drain at the bottom.  But around here in the fall, there are an incredible amount of leaves that fall from the trees, and go everywhere.  "Everywhere" includes the stairwell.  If you've ever tried to get leaves up out of this sort of stairwell, you know what a major pain it is.

But the same door that keeps the bad stuff out also means that the stairwell, especially the bottom, is forever dank and moldy. Which brings us to this project: replace the old disgusting screen door, and repaint the interior door, the door trim, and in the process, ponder a solution for covering the stairwell which will keep out the leaves, but allow ventilation so as to prevent the dankness and mold from happening.

Aside from the fact that it's pretty disgusting, it makes the stairwell pretty unusable (who wants to go up and down that?), and it tends to attract critters which actually like that sort of environment.

When I first moved here, I moved a bunch of boxes via this entrance.  On the first trip I heard this little animal noise.  I stopped.

"Rrrribit."

"Rrrribit."

I looked down to see Kermit the frog near the drain!  I scooped him up in a little bucket and set him free from the stairwell.

Anyway, you probably get the idea from these pictures what the wood trim looks like.  It actually looks a bit worse in these pictures since the lighting isn't so good, but in any event, it isn't pretty.

I am a-gonna fix that.   And I am going to ensure it stays un-disgusting.

The first order of business is to take of the old screen door.  That's straighforward.  And already I feel like I've accomplished something.

The door winds up where it really belongs - the garbage.

I have a nice new aluminum storm door to replace it with.  But first, I need to prep and repaint the trim.

And when I get to stopping points in this process, it's back to electronic junk!