Front Door: From Blah to Bright

When we first moved into our house all of the exterior doors, trim, and shutters were all painted the same blue. Blue is my favorite color but not this blue...it was also very faded. I thought about painting the front door for almost two years and we finally did it this past spring. Once we did I couldn't believe we waited so long. It did take a while to decide a color. We talked about various blues, yellows, and teals. In the end we ended up walking into the store and just picking a color without even sampling it! It is bright and fun and if we get sick of it it will be a quick fix to change. 

We picked "Caribbean Sea" by Glidden. It is the high gloss exterior/interior paint. One quart was about $11. My husband volunteered to do the paint job as he is more of a perfectionist than myself and the front door is the first thing you see after all. 

By the way, I don't love this door. But it is the door we have and there is nothing wrong with it. One thing I didn't like was the yellow plastic around the glass so I primed that with oil based primer and then Pascal painted it the same color as the door. It helps to make the gold in the glass less offensive.

Pascal cut in with a brush first and then rolled with a small foam brush. It took two coats. He started in the morning so we could keep the door open all day. 

In  addition to painting the door we also bought new door knobs to replace the old gold ones. There are so many beautiful options but I went the cheap route for now...I found a basic brushed stainless steel doorknob set from Lowe's for $30. And it came with two! So we can replace the ones on our back door too.

We also bought a vinyl sticker to add our house number to the door. I was inspired by several pictures on Pinterest like this one. And I wanted to take down the small brass numbers on our porch post that are barely visible from the street anyways. 

I searched Etsy and there were a lot of options. I made the mistake of not paying more attention  to measurements and the first one I ordered was too small...So then I found one from a different company and ordered the right size for only $6! I thought this was a really good price for a large 5 digit house number and cheaper than other shops.  It came quickly and had detailed instructions for application. Since I don't want to show a picture of our actual house numbers here is a picture from the Etsy store TM Decals where I bought mine.You can pick different fonts and colors but I just went with white.

Photo Credit TM Decals

And here is an after picture of my door...With a piece of paper to cover the number because I am better at using tape than a computer to edit the number out.

Now I just need to update the storm door...oh and of course the siding.