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

What is Urban Renewal?

You might be asking yourself what is Urban Renewal? Beside being the name of our blog, when you google Urban Renewal you might find definitions like this...

• the clearing and rebuilding and redevelopment of urban slums
  wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
• Urban Renewal is a tribute album to pop singer Phil Collins, released in 2001 in most European markets and in 2003 in the United States, containing re-produced remakes of Collins' songs by R&B and hip hop performers. ...
  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_Renewal_(album)
• the acquisition of run-down city areas for purposes of redevelopment.
  www.cyberhomes.com/content/allabout/glossary.aspx

If you are one of the very few lucky people to have seen our house before we moved in you might agree with many of the above definitions...all except the Phil Collins album. I bet they sing "In the Air Tonight" definitely one of my faves.

But really urban renewal is the tag line used by my father who would call and ask what kind of "urban renewal" projects we were up to. My father knows a lot about property and understands that the best return comes from those found in "up and coming neighborhoods" which is exactly where we bought. We thought it would be fun to choose our own upgrades and updates. What nobody knows is all I cared about was the fact that the place had a red front door...always wanted one. Unfortunately in our earlier post with the "before" pictures you don't have the luxury of seeing that there was a doorway at the bottom of the basement stairs for the other apartment and the blue "elementary school carpet" (dubbed by a friend) that was torn up before I had a chance to capture the memories with my camera. HB and his dad tore the doorway off since it was creepy (to me) and unnecessary. Also, since there were beautiful hardwoods under the "elementary school carpet" (seriously the lowest grade of ugly carpet you have ever seen) why keep them covered?

So there you have it, Urban Renewal was born as our tag line for our rehabilitation techniques for this house that was in desperate need.