Since the front door is one of the first things you see when you visit someone's home, I figured it was fitting that my first entry should be about mine!
After several years of unemployment and living with family, my little family has finally moved into our own (rented) home. We're very excited! We've been cleaning and organizing for a few weeks now - with lots more to do - but I decided to take a couple evenings to do something to make the house "ours". With the landlord's blessing (we have an awesome landlord - we can do pretty much whatever we want as long as it's not permanently damaging to the property), I painted the front door.
Why the front door? I have always dreamed of having a house with a colorful front door. Odd, maybe, but there you go. Red is nice, and so is blue, but lately I've been lusting after beautiful deep green doors. So I picked up a quart of exterior paint from Sherwin Wiliams and headed home to begin the transformation.
Our original door is steel, and was painted a grungy white. Even trying to clean it, it still looked icky. Since replacing it was out of the question (and budget), I figured paint was just the thing to give it a face-lift. I don't have a really good before photo, but here's the best I could find, though it doesn't really convey how grubby it looked. But added bonus: my little guy "hiding" behind the screen door.
Boring, right? White siding, white trim, white storm door, white front door. Bleh. (But cute diaper-clad heinie. Nothing boring there, trust me.)
So one evening when the kids were in bed, I set about transforming my grungy white door into the green one from my dreams. I started by cleaning the whole door well, and lightly sanding it per the instructions of the Sherwin Williams associate. Since this was going to be a multi-evening project (I can only work on things like this when the kids are in bed, and I knew it would take more than one coat of paint), I opted to tape off the hardware and paint the door still hanging on the hinges so I could close and lock the door before bed (after several hours' dry time, of course). Then I took a deep breath and started applying the paint.
Let me tell you, when I saw it after the first coat, my heart dropped into my stomach. It looked awful! See?
I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. This was not what I'd been picturing! So, naturally, after a moment of panic that I'd just ruined the front door, I turned to my good friend Google to see if anyone else had similar "first coat" photos. Thankfully, I did find a few sites where people posted their in-progress photos, and I felt much better after seeing their doors looked hilariously awful one coat in, too. PHEW!
I got one more coat in that evening, and a third the next day, and it really did get progressively better - THANK GOODNESS!
Much better, right? After the third coat dried, it was still just a little splotchy in a few areas, so I put on a fourth coat to finish it off. All in all, it took half a quart of paint (I only painted the "outward facing" half of the door, not the inside) and three evenings. My tape-off job could have been better - I still have a little paint to scrub off the door knob and deadbolt lock - and the color was a little lighter and "bluer" than I'd been picturing, but I still think it looks awesome!
All finished!
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