Viola - I do use the door every once in a while. The basement stairs are right there so if we bring in something large to store in the basement we will use that door to make life easier. However; the tip for the light is great. Looking at the house everyday; I actually forgot it was there. I will take that down. We also will be changing that door. No storm and it will be painted the same color as the siding. Karin - Your right. I'm actually starting the garden bed first because when we pull up those front hedges and expose the front of our house I would like to have something nice for my neighbors to see. I would like to extend the garden. Unfortunately I have to hold off till my loving husband excepts the face that he will need to bust up that old walkway/sidewalk thing. For now my new garden bed actually meets up to the walkway in a to be continued state.

Well guys, We still live in the house we bought to in 2014 in order to move Donna's aging mom who was (at that time) showing symptoms of dementia. The dementia progressively took its toll on her mind, and then in October of 2016, she was diagnosed with stage 4 bladder cancer. She lived until early February 2017 and died here at home with us, as she wished and she had made us promise not to let her die in a hospital or nursing home. She died surrounded by family and a hospice nurse was present. I only relate this story because Donna's mom's health situation was the reason we bought a house big enough for all of us to live in, under one roof.........and the subsequential multiple projects and renovations.........were the reasons I dropped off of the forum. As soon as we moved into the house, I had a long list of things that HAD to be done, and a long list of lesser things we WANTED to do......so my time on the forum just could not be justified.....I simply had too much to do. The first things to be done were to come up with safety measures to help prevent an elderly woman with dementia from injury by being proactive about preventing her from "escaping" the house. I had to equip all exit doors with a deadbolt lock keyed inside and out (all keyed alike) and we had to come up with a nearby "hiding place" close to each lock location for spare keys in case of emergency. This house has a full basement with stairs, and we did not want her mom to have access to the stairs, so I included the same deadbolt on that door too. The sliding door to the second floor deck was a challenge in that it had a key lock on the outside ONLY with just a paddle lock lever on the inside. I had to come up with a way to make that door lockable with a key from the inside. My solution was to remove the lock assembly from the door and "reverse" location of the paddle lever plate and the key tumbler plate, so that the key tumbler would be on the inside. I stripped out the guts relating to the paddle lever and covered the hole where the paddle shaft came through with a small brass plate.....heavily epoxied in place from the backside (inside the door). All you can see from outside is a small hole blanked off with brass. The deck is on the second story on the backside of the house with stairs leading down the the pool, which is enclosed inside a fence, so we never use the sliding door as a "key entry" point anyhow. Then there is the attic storage space epic adventure. The attic space when we bought the house, was almost non-existent. There was a total of 4 sheets of 4' X 8' plywood (128 sq. ft.) on the joists at the top of an extremely rickety pull down wooden stairs. Stairs were the first to go. Replaced with a sturdy aluminum pull down folding stairs. Then I hauled 22 4' X 8' sheets of 3/4 OSB into the attic space.(each sheet was cut in half lengthwise to fit through attic stairs opening). We now have about 800 sq. ft. of usable attic storage space. I built 2 inverted trusses (strong backs) to attach to the joists on the sections spanning the 12' kitchen and the 18' den. These trusses ensure that the load imposed by the extra OSB and stored material are ultimately borne by the load bearing walls at the hallway, den, and both walls of the kitchen. The addition of the trusses assures that the ceiling joists do not assume a sway back shape over time resulting in cracked ceiling gypsum board. I assembled the trusses in the attic and fabricated them to have about 1/2" "preload bow" on the 18' truss and 3/8" preload bow on the 12' truss. This was to ensure that the trusses were actually carrying some load right from the start. After I got the trusses built and fastened onto each joist they served with metal strapping, I built a 30' long, 2 tier shelf system into the truss structures. Shelves are 24" wide and the bottom shelf is 20" off the floor, while the second shelf is 46" off the floor, so you have the attic floor under the shelves, and the 2 shelves themselves for storage, That yields 180 sq. ft. of space, plus the remaining 720 or so sq. ft. of attic at various head space. The tallest overhead clearance is about 6'2" at the rafter collar ties (and I added collar ties so that every rafter has a tie, instead of every third rafter as the house was built). There were 4 rafters that had "split" open due to improper orientation by the rough carpenters. They had placed rafters with knots situated on the lower chord of the rafter (tension side), which is a no-no. These rafters had to be jacked back into place and reinforcement panels of 3/4" plywood "scabbed" onto each side, glued and screwed. The original scheme had the ventilation exhaust fans from both bathrooms simply dumping into the attic space, another no-no. I extended the exhaust hoses over to the gable area of the house and busted through the brick and installed 2 bona fide exhaust hoods with insect screens. On the longest hose, which was a 4" hose....I built a booster fan box in the middle of that run and wired it so that it turns on when the original fan turns on. I felt that a 16' run of 4" hose would probably need all the fan power it could get to keep from simply "stalling out". The other hose was 6" and only 8' long, so I felt it was adequate with no additional help needed. I could go on and on about other projects, but these were some of my most major undertakings, Now, about my employment. I no longer work as a forklift mechanic in the shop. In midsummer 2015, I took over running the parts department when our longstanding partsman retired. This was challenging in that it put me to the task of acquiring and dispensing the parts instead of installing them on vehicles. It has also been challenging in that I was the first partsman in our history to actually have the capability of searching the Volvo and Daimler websites to look up parts. It was in the summer of 2015 that the company finally got onboard with software to enable this. Prior to that advent, our method of ordering parts involve looking the parts up in hard copy paper parts manuals, or talking to a vendor/dealer on the phone and trying to describe what you wanted, it was sometimes a crap shoot whether you would get the right parts or not. The outgoing partsman never had to use the computer to look up and order parts, and when it was introduced, he refused to do it saying that his time was too short to need it, so he told me to get all the training and he would just watch. LOL He and I worked side by side for 3 months while he showed me most of the ropes before he retired in October 2015. That is a summary of what I have been up to. I know this was completely off topic, but since the request was posed here, I felt OK in responding here.

Yes, I do have a problem distinguishing between homeless pieces of furniture and stray cats :-) True about those old casters - I try to avoid rolling them on the pieces I have. Check them, but if you want it to actually roll I would probably get new casters. At least the leg length will already be right for them. One bonus to its condition, by the way - the original finish is all off the top. That saves you stripping it. But it's OK on the legs, so you don't need to strip those. Perfect project. One thing that should be made clear is that a $40 table at a yard sale or on craigslist is quite legitimately at least an $80 table in a store. If you've ever shopped on craigslist you'll know why - you shop at each item owner's convenience (and they always live in the back of beyond), while the shop owner invests quite a lot - utilities, inventory, and time - in being in the store at your convenience. In effect she's out there shopping for you. And probably gives up a percentage of the sale to the credit card company in many cases :-) Good point about making an offer so low it's insulting. Some people don't care about that but I do too, as I like to feel welcome in the store again! It's easier to lowball if an item has been on the market for a a while. But even if it has, the insult can come from both the number itself, and in how you do it. What I usually do with an overpriced item on craigslist is to say that I am interested, but I don't think I could pay more than $xxx, but I'm absolutely not in a rush so if they want to wait and see if they can get their price they're welcome to do that. Some variant of that could work. Given all the factors you've mentioned, I wouldn't be embarrassed to go as high as the $100 range, or whatever would leave you still feeling good. If the leg is truly broken (I can't see that), that would maybe take it down a notch. KarinL PS a cabinet scraper might do a better job than a sander on the top, and doesn't make so much dust. Here is a link that might be useful: example of a specialty caster store

Well....this has turned into a discussion of pain ted vs not painted furniture.....when the forum is about antiques. To me things that were not originally made to be painted and get painted looks like "early marriage" decorating on a shoe string and if it looks beat up...paint it! And this assumption affirmed by all who says a Duncan Phyfe looks "Fresh and young" painted.... It would be criminal to paint those chairs...And I really think a painted Duncan Phyfe style looks very "improvised" painted....like look....I couldn't afford new....so I painted this! A real wood finish, with a coat of good paste wax....or if you must refinish it a coat of oil based poly is pretty resistant to wet glasses and milk spills.