We've been waiting for you... ok I never even watched Three's Company but there aren't that many songs about doors I guess.
As we wind up the finishing touches on the bedroom, we have a big ol' list of "little things" we want to do before we take on the next room project. Some of them are best if we get them done before winter rolls in.
Refinishing the door was a big one.
As you'll see, it it was very weathered and worn. The wind and rain seem to team up and favour the left side of the door. If we left this to be, every day this winter we would shake our heads at the lack of care so we knew we had to do something.
After much consultation with our local Guthrie Bowron branch, and our favourite paint expert at Mitre 10 (who is also named Katherine), we decided that painting it would be better than re-varnishing in the way it was. Although this rates a few notches below just buying a new door in my books.
So one Sunday afternoon last month, we spent many many minutes sanding and scraping the door, and sanding the door more. Then we ended up trying some chemical paint remover that burned Dustin's wrist a bit (good thing he's tough) but found it just made the old varnish gummy. It worked well for the door jamb though. Then, we needed at least one coat of paint on in case the coming week brought any rain! I had to duck out to pick up friends at the airport but Dustin trucked on and got the door hung and painted. Then we went to the pub for a $10 roast meal (well earned).
Of course this is the type of project this is so simple but still takes another couple weeks because you need to leave it open to let it dry between coats and that means someone should be home to man the house. We finished the outside as we still considered whether to paint the inside the same colour or to paint it white (or some variation of it) inside. Finally we just decided to cover the whole thing in black so we could wrap it up.
Being the classy folk that we are, we had hoped to add a big metal door knocker but we decided we didn't care enough to spend like $60-80 on one that wasn't a boring brass (ick!) one. There were definitely some cool ones but we decided to leave it unadorned instead. But that's good because it meant we can officially call the front door project done (even though we got a little loose with the inside painting and got it on the arcs around the door.... we know that's technically part of the hallway upgrade so decided we could live with a few extra brush strokes in the meantime).
And that is the story of our door. Why I wrote this many words about it I couldn't explain. Because really the pictures here are all people really want to see.
looks great!!!
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