New Door Hardware and Keep.com

You guys already know about a lot of these plans, but I was thinking earlier today, as I was spending a royal fortune online on door hardware, that it's funny how one small decision in a remodel can turn into a seriously huge black hole of additional projects. It all started out innocently enough. Here was my train of thought:

1) This is very possibly our forever home, and I don't love the existing floors.

2) Some day I'd love to put in new hardwood floors throughout the house.

3) On second thought the new floors should definitely go in before our stuff comes at the end of the month. Let's take advantage of the empty house.

4) In order to put in the new floors, I guess we have to demo everything that will eventually be going out so that we don't have to patch the wood later (which would be expensive and a huge pain).

5) The old front door sticks really bad when you try to open it. Also the handleset is really difficult to use and needs to be replaced soon. Sounds like it's time for a new front door.

And maybe a new doorbell while we're at it.

6) If I had my choice I'd go with a taller double door (the current one feels really squatty with the high ceilings). Which means the threshold will be different per the door installer. Of course.

7) New threshold will change quite a lot, turns out. And it will effect the new floors. So we spring for a new front door now.

8) And also a new handleset ($$$$! ouch!).

But how exciting to replace this:

9) A new handleset means we need to come out and have a locksmith change the locks. Our home warranty policy pays for all the locks to be changed at once. Of which there are plenty - taking advantage of this deal saves us a lot of money. Here's what my door hardware currently looks like.

10) Yeah... I'm thinking I maybe should just replace all the door hardware in the house now too. The locksmith confirms I should have the new hardware installed before he comes out.

11) New hardware means new door hinges.

12) New hinges means I should probably just paint all my doors now. I know I can replace the hinges one by one without taking down the doors, but if I'm going to take down the doors to paint them at some point, might as well only unscrew all those hinges one time.

13) If I'm painting all my doors, maybe I should by that paint sprayer I've been dreaming of for years...

14) Etc., etc., etc.

Point is - holy domino effect!! Looks like the money I put aside for new bedroom furniture will be dedicated to all aspects of new door hardware. That's okay though - shopping for door hardware is almost as fun for me as shopping for new headboards. I just wish they didn't cost about the same in the end! :)

One of my favorite sponsors, Keep.com, has come in handy as I've been managing all of these purchases (and my wish lists). Especially for things like door hardware - where I'm comparing a ton of different options. Keep helps me, well, keep track of all my shopping wish lists and potential purchases. Truly, it is SUCH a helpful service. I still use Pinterest for my inspiration images, but I use Keep for my shopping.

Here's a mini tutorial. Just like Pinterest, you quickly install a Keep It button in your menu bar. Then you do your normal web browsing and online shopping. Any time you come across a product for sale that you love and want to remember for later, you press the Keep It button on your menu bar. A little window pops up that helps you save the keep in the right collection and then you're done and you can close out the window of the product.

Before I started using Keep, my bookmarks were so completely out of control that they were pretty useless. So then I would literally have like a dozen windows with each a dozen or more tabs each. And then by the time I would actually look through those tabs again, the item would be sold out.

I've been using Keep to store all my house finds (and my fashion finds too - it seems like that's what most keepers use the site for). Here's my door hardware collection.

The very best part of Keep is getting to follow other keepers. You start finding people that have your same style and the aggregate result ends up being a little like having a personal online shopper! Crowd sourcing at its finest. Thanks to my keepers I found a new suit that has been garnering endless complements at our neighborhood pool:

Here are some more of my boards. I'll be doing more keeping this weekend as we unpack a lot of our stuff and start to notice holes in the furniture layouts, missing lighting, need for more rugs, etc, etc. Let me know if you join in on the fun so I can follow you. :) Happy weekend!

This post was a collaboration with Keep.com which is a sponsor of LGN. Thank you for supporting our sponsors!