(Death)Trap(door)

 As I mentioned before, we had some friends over for labor day.  As they were heading out, one of them tripped on this unruly piece of trim:

 I had an immediate vision of him tumbling headlong down the steps and crushing his skull on the concrete below.  It wasn't pretty.  Thankfully, that was just my vision.  John caught his step just fine and was none the worse for the wear.  After they left, I couldn't shake off the bad feeling from such a near miss, so I decided to tackle the problem then and there!

This is a picture of the door before.  Can you see that piece of trim sticking out into the doorway (bottom left)?

You'll also notice the peeling paint by the doorknob and the chips along the bottom of the door.  The paint will be fixed when I pick a new color and paint it (duh), and the chips will be covered by a kick-plate.

It's actually a part of molding that used to hold a screen door.  See the useless hinges?

I've known since we bought the house that we would eventually need to address the problem, but I was afraid to remove it; I was worried we would find something we didn't want to know about behind the trim, like termites, rotten wood, or something really gross (I tried to come up with something creative here, but all I could come up with was "like one of Charlie Sheen's girlfriends", which I'm really not understanding, myself.  It's strange how differently your brain functions after having a baby).

 So before I started demo in earnest, I took a peek behind the (vinyl? aluminum?) trim to see what we had going on back there.  It looked like good wood to me, so I ripped that sucker off:

 There were actually two layers of trim.  One was a flat piece to cover the wide area, and one was a thin corner piece that used to house the screen door.  I attacked the corner piece first, and it came off without a hitch.  For some reason, the wood behind that piece was painted yellow.  Either that, or they used some sort of adhesive to attach the trim, and over time it lost its stickiness and turned this color.  Honestly, I have no idea why it's yellow.  I probably don't want to know.

 Next I pried off the wide trim.  I was left with a mostly intact door frame, albeit a chipped, holey, two-toned one:

 The next item on my agenda is to fill the holes with trim, scrape and sand the trim, then prime and paint.  All that holds me back is picking a color scheme!  I'm still working on that.  Pat sweetly told me we could have whatever color roof I want, even if it does make our light bill go up a little.  I very much appreciated that, but now I have one more variable to consider!  For someone who has a difficult time deciding which tank top to wear in the morning, it's a little overwhelming. 

Have you fixed any safety hazards in your house lately?  Does your postpartum brain find any phrase containing "Charlie Sheen" to be hilarious?  Do you stare at your tank tops for five minutes before picking one out to wear?

-Kelli