New Railing and Storm Doors

We decided to put up railing last year. It's not required by code but we figured that it would help improve the look of the house and prevent any unwanted accidents. We wanted it to last but didn't want to spend a fortune for it. We finally settled on ColorGuard railing. Each piece of railing comes with everything that you need.

Some of the original posts had some rot on them. They looked nice but were not pressure treated. Two of them would have need to be replaced this summer no matter what. The posts were replaced with pressure treated 4x4 posts that had a vinyl sleeve placed over them.

New Larson Tradewinds storm doors were installed. These have the retractable screen. The door on the front of the house is a full view and the one on the back is a mid view. The retractable screen is nice since you can open the door at any time and pull down the glass to reveal the screen. There's no mess with the removing glass and installing the screen.

Here's the before pics.

The new look:

Family and Cancer

Lee Ann's cousin's wife has cancer. She has been documenting her progress on her MySpace site. She and her family are doing as well as can be expected. I can't even imagine what it must be like to deal with it.

The brother of my best friend from high school had his son diagnosed with Leukemia a couple of years ago. He's made it through the chemo and I believe that they have stated that it's in remission. Again, it's not a situation that's easy to imagine. There is a good documentary called A Lion in the House that appeared on PBS a couple of years ago that deal with children and cancer. It's probably one of the saddest things I've watched.