Columbus, Ohio

Home Improvements for March 2009

Dresser from IkeaWe’ve been making some home improvements this month. In the past couple weeks we replaced most of our door knobs, installed new door hinges and added two new night stands to our master bedroom.

The door knobs in the house are complete junk. When we first moved in, we had 2 doors that had a sticky feeling when trying to open them. When I finally took the door knobs apart to see what the problem was, I had myself a pile of plastic pieces from inside the door. From observation, I think we were lucky the door knobs even worked. When I replaced the door knobs, we purchased new nickle plated ones that had a very modern look. We purchased the house brand sold at Lowes which use metal (rather than plastic) mechanical parts inside. 2 years later, 10 of our doors still have old worn gold plated door knobs. So this month we replaced 6 more of the door handles, leaving 4 more left to do next month.

20090331211737Since we had our baby in January, we’re both finding that our squeaky door hinges are very annoying when either of us wake up in the middle of the night. So last weekend we got new nickle plated hinges to match our nickle plated door knobs. When I first started installing the new hinges, I did it by hand. After 2 doors, a light bulb went off and I grabbed the cordless drill. The process of replacing the hinges went from taking just over an hour a door to about 10 minutes a door. I’m almost done, I need 6 more hinges and 2 door stops to complete the project.

Last are the new night stands. Our master bedroom is rather wide, mainly because we have a queen size bed. At Ikea night stands are pretty small and also low to the ground. So we ended up getting their smallest dresser to use as our night stands. They’re at the perfect height for our bed and fill our space perfectly. If we ever get a King size bed these night stands may be a problem but for now they’re great!

We love the nickle finish and we’re eventually going to replace everything that has a gold finish with the nickle finish. Luckily, the door hinges, knobs and other finishing items are the same price as the gold plated ones. We’re certainly not using bronze or chrome!

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