Weekend Project: Front Door Redo

Okay – so the door painting project? Happened a little sooner than planned.

In keeping with our EAC (“easy, awesome, & cheap”) philosophy about the house, we made a decision to just keep our existing door. It works fine, and even though we would have loved some additional light coming through the front, we also knew that ultimately, we could live without it in order to have extra cash to use on other projects.

And so since the weather was perfect for painting on Saturday… well, we were tired of coming home to this every day:

So after a quick trip to Lowes to pick up the brightest red we could find (the aptly named “Edgy Red”) we came home and started prep work on the door.

The fiancee handled a light power sand over the entire surface to rough up the old paint (to give the new coat of paint a better surface to adhere to) and I went over all the little grooves with rough sand paper by hand.

After frog-taping around the handle and lock, we were ready to go.

We were educated by the Lowes paint guy that red has some of the highest pigment count of any paint and so usually has issues coating over other colors (especially dark colors like ours) which meant that we were in for several coats to get the solid finish we wanted. The longest part was waiting for each coat to try – around 6 hrs between each application.

We managed to squeeze two coats in on Saturday, but it rained on Sunday so we we had to stop there. We’ll get a final coat on next Saturday and add the rest of the new hardware we bought.

Even so, it’s a huge improvement:

(yes, those are small animals humping each other on our front stoop and no, they’re not ours and they’re not staying forever. Long story!)

Once we get the last coats on we’ll be adding a black kick plate to the bottom, a door knocker (yes, we have a door bell – but there’s a certain charm to having a door knocker) and eventually swapping out the door hardware to oil rubbed bronze for a complete makeover:

When it gets a little warmer, we’ll also be replacing the herbs in the planter with some bright and cheerful flowers for another pop of color.

So here’s the breakdown on the project:

Cost:

Paint (Behr Exterior “Edgy Red”) 1 quart – Aprox. $15.00 (from Home Depot)
Kick Plate – $25.00 (from Lowes)
New Door Lock – $69.99 (from doorcorner.com)
Door Knocker – budgeted $40.00 (but not bought yet!)

Total: $150.00

Time:

Sanding/Prep – 20 minutes
Painting (each coat) – 15 minutes
Drying (each coat) – 6hrs