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Thursday, June 13, 2013

Shut the Front Door

One of the projects we hoped to work on and finish this year is updating the front door. The door is a decent quality, solid wood door that has been painted a few times over the years. We know it's not the original door for two reasons. First, it's not the right style for a house built in 1914. Second, the plaster and baseboard adjacent to the door have been messed up.

When we bought the house, the front door was a dark teal on the exterior and a different shade of turquoise on the interior. All the trim in the living room, dining room and bigger bedroom were also some shade of turquoise/teal - meaning different and not matching. It was weird and we just didn't like it.

Hopefully it's obvious that these are the "before" shots. We stopped using the mail slot years ago, because the dog would become a ferocious, slobbering mess every time the mail was delivered. The door knocker/peep hole was kind of interesting just ugly. The little door always blew open, so we taped it shut with good old fashioned packing tape (classy, right).

After removing the brass-like hardware, we filled in the holes with some rigid insulation we already had on hand. Then we test fitted the 1/8" plywood to make sure we liked the proportions. We decided to go with a single panel rather than being more detailed just to simplify things. This is a quick-fix after all.

Nate hand cut some tiny little trim to go around the edges of the plywood. I suppose this step wasn't necessary, but we think it adds a little je ne sais quoi. I don't know, I heard that somewhere. Anyway, the little trim just covers the unfinished edges of the plywood, and it's a different thickness so it adds some dimension to an otherwise flat door.

Can you believe these photos date from February? Yeah. The door went from "before" to "in progress" and then stayed like this until May. Our lady mailman actually asked me if someone had tried breaking in. Ugh. Oh! Can you guess which color we chose?






13 comments:

  1. I like your favorite too. But I would've been happy with any of those colors--they're great!

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    1. Honestly any of them would look just fine. I originally wanted a dark maroon, but everything was too orange or too purple.

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  2. Most of the colors are great. Though, I'm a fan of the purple, because my front door is purple and I love it!! I'm looking forward to the after pictures.

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    1. I have no recollection of your front door being purple. That's weird, because I normally notice things like that. We might finish this weekend since it's supposed to dry out, and I need a little break from the yard.

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  3. I really like your favorite and Nate's favorite! I can't wait to see what you chose!

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    1. He wanted grey and I wanted navy...in a yellow room. Either would look good, but I didn't want grey :)

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  4. I love that you're making your door work instead of replacing it. :)

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    1. Less waste and less spent for sure. It will make a big difference - we should have done this years ago!

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  5. Your favourite is my favourite too!

    I really like that you guys are making this work rather than replacing. Hooray for cost effectiveness!

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    1. We looked at replacement doors years ago that were in the $900 range just for the door. Then there would be all the other work involved as well. This option really simplifies things :)

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  6. I can totally relate to this business of front door projects taking a while -- ours has been in a very ugly state since at least early April, though luckily no one has gotten a chance to ask us awkward questions about attempted break-ins yet, haha. Love the captions on your potential paint colors and looking forward to seeing the end result! :)

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  7. Thanks, Sarah! You have a baby, so you know - sometimes you just have to wait until you have the energy, right weather and time in order to get things like this finished up. Your new fence looks great, by the way!

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  8. "Nate's favorite" looks like a great choice - not too dark and not too bright, just somewhere in between. May I ask what's the hold up on this project? I'm curious if you're already done repainting your door and what color did you end up using.

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