Front Door Progress

I did it! I finally did it!

I started on the front door's makeover today! Last week I bought gel stripper and it is definitely the way to go! Look at all that ooey gooey goodness...

OK, so it's not all that pretty. The brownish paint (which is actually way more baby poop brownish yellow in person) is the main color on the door. The white is the base coat and that's all on top of a gorgeous wood door (the darker wood). That oval shape on the right is where the mail slot used to be but we sealed that sucker up last summer.

I was going to paint it. I even own the paint and it's been sitting under our armoire in the front room, basically right behind the door, for over a year now. But as my mom stood by me this morning and we watched the paint come right off, it showed a beautiful wood door. Soooo... I'm going to strip it and varnish it. It's too pretty to paint.

However, of course, there are some snags in this project. One, obviously, is the mail slot section. My mom came up with a great idea of buying a plaque, maybe with our last name on it, to hide it. I loved that idea and instantly thought of the vintage style metal ones that appear throughout Blog World.

Another snag is that the door bell wiring was hidden behind the metal frame from the old screen door. The screen door has never been there since we bought the house 5 years ago (almost!). That was a nice shocker this morning. So, we may get rid of the wired door bell anyway since I was going to have to buy a replacement since the original one was broken (I found that out while painting the hallway).

We do want to buy a screen door for this door to get some cross breeze when it's not 95 degrees outside, but Doug has a certain design in mind and we haven't been able to find it again. When we will, we'll snag that baby up as soon as possible. Or maybe we'll make it.

Issue #3 - the door frame is not the same wood. It's not liking the stripping process either. So it may be painted. Bringing me to the question of what color?

Issue #4 - we need to do something with the threshold. Again, we can paint it but what color? I have thought about painting it the same color as the door frame or the color of the porch floor, which I'd love to change from the chippy brick red color it's sporting currently. Decisions, decisions.

And that may be the only 4 issues I have with it... right now. I'm sure something will come up.

Anyway, break's over, back to stripping the paint off. I'm wearing gloves 'cause that stuff burns!