Old Doors at Christmas

 When we had the store, we were always hunting for old doors. A few we sold as is, but we upcycled most of them, by giving them a new life. Some became the back part of potting tables, like this one:

The door part is a little hidden right now, because of the red barn wood piece setting on it. 

Isn't that barn wood pretty? When the barn on George's dad's farm got torn down, we saved a few pieces of the red siding. On this one, I added some artificial pine and berries, plus one of the red cardinals we made from old, corrugated roofing tin. This particular one did not come from the tin from his dad's barn, but many of the earlier pieces we cut from tin did come from there. 

One day, his 80 something year old father stopped in our store for a visit. He looked at some of the pieces we had cut from his roofing tin and shook his head. "George said he wanted to save some of the tin from my barn for craft projects." 

Then he shook his head in bewilderment. 

The whole upcycling thing is something you get, or you don't. And he didn't. But he chuckled and went along with it. 

The base of the planter on the shelf used to be a chicken feeder. I cut a few sprigs from a pine tree and laid them inside it, along with a nest that blew down in a windstorm. 

Anyway, back to the doors:

We made lots of door trees from them too. Boy oh boy, those were A LOT of work! 

They were great sellers, so we kept making them, but George was about ready to pull his hair out a few times! 

We kept these 2 for ourselves. This is a terrible photo of them, but I stepped out on the porch with no coat on, with a real feel temp of -1, so this is as good as it's going to get tonight! lol

I've admired the privacy fences made from old doors for a long time but never had a good spot to put one. Nevertheless, we hung onto a few doors just in case we found a spot.

And we did!

I've really enjoyed decorating these ones for the seasons. 

This is the side we see from our kitchen window.

And this is the back side that our wonderful neighbors see. 

Last year, I had that cart on the right side in the back, filled with pine branches, along with some other decorations. And apparently never took a picture of it.

This year, I didn't decorate the back very much because in the fall, we set the old grain cleaner behind the doors. Next year, we will move it more to the side, and plan to fill it with flowers, along with the flowers that will be planted in the ground around it. 

Speaking of the neighbors, they have the prettiest light display every year! 

The photo doesn't begin to do it justice, but we sure do enjoy it!!

Back to our own place, we put our sleigh on our porch. Again, terrible photo, because as stated above, it feels like -1 out there, and I didn't think to get better pictures in the daylight. 

Maybe tomorrow!