The Front Door

I'm pretty sure I'm the worst blogger ever since I never post anything about our new "fixer-upper" house, even now that we are a year and a half into making it our home. The main reason is really that I'm guilty of over-thinking this whole blogging process, so I'm going to try to commit to buckle down and just start writing and posting again without being too overly self-critical. I love this as a creative outlet, and I love sharing our progress with family and friends, so I really hope to stick to it. :)

For tonight, I want to show you our front door project (from November 2018). After all, it's one of the first impressions you get of a house, so it naturally should be one of the first projects I post about. (Let's be real, it's not the first project we did. There was nothing physically wrong with the front door. It worked great, didn't stick, and other than being a little drafty last winter, our only complaint was the style and color.)















Please note two things in these befores:
1) The beat-up screen door. It looks okay-ish in this photo, but since this door gets used many times daily, it was in HORRIBLE shape.
2) The main door. I'm fairly sure this is the original door from when our 50-year-old house was new. All things considered, I'm happy it was in as good a shape as it was. But, that being said, it was definitely time for an update. I don't hate red doors, but this one is just...yuck.

Because that door had no window, the front hallway was SO dark. Here's a picture of it before we bought it, so you can imagine how dark and uninviting the entrance was.

We decided to replace it with a "Fanlite" style door, which would give us light in the hallway without compromising on privacy (you can see into most of the living space and the master bedroom from right inside the front door). We have and plan to continue to DIY most of our home projects, but the front door was an exception. We had it installed by a contractor through Lowe's.

(The baby gate is for the dogs when we want to restrict them to different areas in our house and is one of the best things we have EVER purchased as dog owners. It worked great to keep them out of the contractor's hair without shutting them up in a bedroom. Here's the one we have: Amazon.)

Ta-da!!!!!!

I can just hear the angels singing. (Haha!) It's such a huge improvement. You can see the daylight that it allows into the hallway. This was taken in the morning around 10am, and that hallway would otherwise be dark enough to use the ceiling light. Not anymore!

  

One of my favorite before and afters are the doorknobs and doorbells. I'm absolutely in love with the new style, and it was totally worth paying a little extra for the style we wanted.

Also, that weekend, yours truly replaced the doorbell button. The actual doorbell worked fine, but look how dated and gross the button was. We simply replaced it to match the new door. The new one has a light in it and looks so much better.

 

This was one of the more expensive projects we've done since we hired someone else to install the door, but given our level of experience, it was too risky of a project for us to tackle ourselves. This is totally an unsolicited opinion, but we were really happy with the experience with this install from Lowe's. The contractor did a great job, worked quickly and efficiently, and cleaned up after himself when he was finished.

Believe it or not, this project is NOT finished. We plan to paint the door as soon as time allows. It will be a dark gray color like this:

Stay tuned! :)

The door: Lowe's

The handle (satin nickel): Lowe's

Doorbell button (satin nickel): Lowe's

Paint: Valspar Season Plus Exterior Paint + Primer (used white for trim and will use Muskeg Gray for the door)

Lamb's Ear Wreath: Hobby Lobby