A Fourth of July Monsoon
That’s what we had here in Durham. It started at about 5 pm and poured rain for so long that the fireworks display at the Bulls Stadium was pushed over into Tuesday evening. Which we happily enjoyed with friends on the deck of the Tobacco Road Sports Cafe (get the humus and pimento cheese – you won’t be sorry).
The torrential rains didn’t stop us from taking a few steps to make the outside of the casa more spirited – everything just got a little wet afterwards that’s all. Probably the biggest change we made was to put a fresh coat of paint on our front doors – we have two, one solid wood interior door and a glass paneled storm door.
Luckily we thought to do this on the 3rd, giving us plenty of drying time before the monsoon hit. The after photo on the right was taken after the storms though, so our plants are looking a little rain beaten.
Bueno yes?
We used a Valspar Duramax exterior paint from Lowes. It has a semi-gloss finish and a lifetime warranty for our high traffic front door.
The color? Fabulous Red, also by Valspar . And it is fabulous my friends. It is so much punchier than our old dingy red door – that we didn’t even know was dingy until we pulled out our paint brushes.
It was a little tricky to paint around all the window panes in the storm door but luckily any slips of the brush were easily wiped off the glass. We went commando and just skipped the painters tape – we’re rebels like that. Surprisingly the pups weren’t covered with paint afterwards either, since we left the door on its hinges the whole time.
They could have easily come out looking like this cat from that old insurance commercial.
Now that we had a freshly painted, bright red door, we could leave our sad little urns without some colorful 4th of July love. So we added some cheap and easy red and white petunias to each urn too.
We just planted them right around our existing holly bushes which are less than colorful to say the least.
Bueno yes? The flowers not me in my gardening/running gear.
Last but certainly not least – it was the 4th of July baby! So we had to switch out our seen-better-days American flag for a brighter, fresher flag.
Our first flag we good to us, he lasted two years before just becoming too faded and mildewed.
We’re not tossing him, instead we’re going to try to clean him up and keep him around the casa, maybe on the back porch which is about to get a clean up as well. It never ends.
Just for fun we’ll leave you with some photos of those fireworks from the Bulls Stadium last night. Love fireworks.
How did you guys decorate for the 4th? Anyone else with a new flag or some jazzy petunias?
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