Monday, May 16, 2011

SHUT THE FRONT DOOR!

As I mentioned in our first post, I have always had a fascination with red doors – I don’t know if it is my Love for Red Door perfume my mother used to wear or the power and “homey-feeling” that I get when I see a home with a red door. Since our home was a rental (and you could tell by the lack of maintenance) I figured that the door had never been repainted since it was installed in 1989.  A neighbor who also has a red door gave me some of their old paint that they had used to re-paint their front door and I was well on my way to freshen up our curb appeal and bring the 1980’s façade to a more current look.
I cleaned off the door with some soap and water to get some dirt and grease off before my new coats of paint and prepped the door by taping off the door handle. I changed the door locks on the first day we moved in and I didn’t feel like re-installing. It would probably have been ideal to remove the handle. The trim was sanded to allow the new paint to adhere and I removed the light fixture cleaned off the glass inserts by placing them in the dishwasher and sanded the surface of the light fixture to allow the paint to adhere. 
One thing I learned…You really shouldn’t sand around wet paint because the dust will stick to your newly painted surface and require another coat of paint…sad face


Next item was to install the new doorbell. Our old one was an ugly brown plastic one that was starting to crack from sun exposure. We have a wired doorbell and it was an easy update. I unscrewed the old button and was happy to find that it was connected by just 2 wires. The wires easily transferred to the 2 attachment screws on the new button that are used to attach the wire which are themselves connected to the doorbell.
I finally put everything back together and in just one day we had an updated curb appeal.

 

Tools Required:
Paint – We used for the door and some indoor/outdoor white paint we had on hand for the trim and the light fixture

Foam Roller – worked best for our front door since it is a metal door and I am not a huge fan of paint brush marks (just be sure not to push hard while rolling since it can rouse the paint and create bubbles)
New House Numbers – purchased at the hardware store 
Silicon Caulk – to keep the numbers in place after drilling the holes for the house numbers it kinda acts like glue
New doorbell – we knew we had a wired doorbell and found a wired doorbell at the hardware store
Hammer, Electric Drill/Screwdriver, Random Orbital Sander

1 comment:

  1. I love reading about all your projects.
    Mom

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