Front Door Redo on a Budget

 

Our front door:  not the most impressive. 

It’s a standard metal door, which the builder dressed up with wood trim.  (Don’t you like how this Arrow points at the rusty spots on the lantern? 0 We discussed replacing the door with something new, but kept hearing about problems with hanging a new door in the old door’s place, and the cost to rip it all out and replace the unit was not in the budget. Plus, this door works great!  I absolutely hate replacing anything that isn’t broken. 

So, we decided to give the existing door a makeover.

 

First, Ryan used a razor to cut through the paint between the trim and the door.

Next, he pried the trim off of the door.  It had been nailed and glued on, but came off quite easily.

He then patched all the holes with Bondo body filler.

And then sanded and sanded and sanded and sanded.

The end result was pretty cool – all those layers.

This is how it looked from the street after he finished sanding it.

Next, he took leftover beadboard from our Laundry Room makeover and cut to size.

Then glued that directly to the door.  Initially, we were going to center this piece, but luckily realized that the bottom of a door will typically have greater width between any decorative elements than the top of the door. The piece is centered horizontally, but has much more space on the bottom than the top.

He then added decorative trim around the beadboard, caulked, primed and painted.

The BEFORE.

The AFTER.

Now wait until you see what he did to the inside!!!!

And yes, I also painted the rusty lantern.  Door swag from Cameron’s in Downtown Lee’s Summit.

Peeping Tom or Nosy Neighbor?

I loved Erin’s picture of “peeping” into your own kitchen, inspired by Mama Pea’s post, which I believe was inspired by someone else, too!   And, in truth, just like Mama Pea, my favorite time to walk or drive through a neighborhood – especially a neighborhood with fabulous homes – is at dusk, when you can still see the outside of the house, but can also have a peek at the rooms and decor inside.

I thought it was such a cool idea to do these “peeping” photos, but, at first, I laughed at the thought of it for our house. 

That’s our kitchen window: the arched one to the right.
 

But then, I was all DUH! I can get pictures of the kitchen from the OTHER side by simply standing on the deck.

Here’s Day.



And Night.  Yup! That’s Ryan cleaning up the dinner dishes.  He didn’t even WANT to know why I was taking pictures at night time through the window.

 

And while I was at it – I went around and snapped photos where I could reach the windows.  

This is a second story window into the Living Room – I had to lean over the deck railing to get this.



From the Front Porch. 

See the deck in the back? That’s where I was standing for the photo above.



Lower level now – looking into the Family Room.



At the front of the house again, peeking into the Dining Room. And as I was taking this picture, a friend was dropping off one of the neighbor kids at the house next door and saw me.  It was funny how I almost felt like I was doing something I shouldn’t be doing ... either way, I know she thinks I'm crazy. 



So with all that, I would really love to see your photos, too.  I’m going to try a linky tool to let folks post links to their photos, if anyone is interested. Sincerely hope it works.!