You could say this past weekend was somewhat productive. In addition to finally knocking out our dining room wainscoting, we did a couple other projects around the house that have been nagging us. One little improvement that Lisa and I are quite fond of is the front door. We spruced it up a little. Sometime last fall, we attempted to paint the side lights to our entrance door. The only problem was we didn’t have any paint left over from the builder, so we tried asking a local paint shop to match the paint based on their records. How did it go? Well, meh, just okay. The color was nice, but it was way off from the original. Didn’t match the shutters at all. We knew we were going to take another whack at this.
To get the color right this time around, I popped off one of the shutters from the front windows and took it to Sherwin Williams for them to match it with a laser tool or something. Whatever it is it works great.
The tricky part about painting the outside part of the front door is keeping it open for four hours. To keep every house fly in New Jersey from stopping by, we taped a table cloth from the dollar store over the opening. Worked well, although we opened a couple windows nearby to keep the air balanced.
After the paint dried, we dressed up the door with new hardware including a new door knob set, a kick plate and a knocker. To help line up the kick plate with the door, we used painter’s tape and marked all our holes.
Notice that Lisa captured my thinning hair. She pretty much does that on purpose in nearly every photo for fun. I usually end up tossing them all and using different ones. This is why I need to turn and smile into the camera next time.
Using a cordless drill to install the kick plate makes it a lot easier.
Here’s our finished product. We’re big fans of the additional gear on the door. We still have yet to paint the side lights. They are on our radar though. The reason we didn’t paint them was because we were busy with some other fun indoor projects that we’ll share with you soon!
Got any door upgrades planned?
