Remember when I gave you a sneak peek a few weeks ago of a fun update that we were finally making to the front of our house?
Well it’s time to show you the final result – here’s our new front door!! I’m smitten.
When we first bought our home in the fall of 2008, we were less than thrilled with the peachy-pink paint and frilly iron bars on our front door, and the sheen on the interior of the door was almost as blinding as the gold, shiny flocked wallpaper.
It improved dramatically during the renovations that we did to the house – the peach paint was scraped and sanded off and the door was stained a rich brown, and the inside of the door was painted a crisp white.
The door looked a whole lot better, but it still wasn’t great. We didn’t love the dated, curvy lines of the door, and it wasn’t in very great shape – it let in air through little gaps in the wood and it was really starting to deteriorate.
We like to try to do an update to our home every time that we do a flip – the trades are a little more flexible with their pricing when we already have them booked to do work on the flip. Last time we replaced the windows, another time we made some changes to the lighting, and this time we swapped out the front door!
I’ve really been looking forward to this update – the front door was one of the few “grandma” things that we still had going on in our house, and I couldn’t wait for something new!
Obviously, the first thing the door guys did was remove the old door – it came out in sections, with the door being taken out first and then the sidelites.
Things looked much worse before they started looking better. I was a little concerned that the big notch in the wood floors wouldn’t be covered by the new threshold. Luckily, it was. :)
It was a rough day, supervising the job while I enjoyed the sunshine flooding in and worked from the couch!
The door guys picked up the door that we had selected from Seconds & Surplus – that’s where we’ve gotten the front doors for all of our flips, and we’ve loved all of them. We originally fell in love with another door there but after we waited a few days checking measurements it had been sold (that’s the risk of a surplus store – they’ve only got what they’ve got, and no more). We wound up finding the exact same door there, but it was in a higher grade of wood (solid walnut versus mahogany) and had upgraded glass – it was pricier than our original choice, but we really love it!
The new door is slightly taller and skinnier than our old door, so they had to make some slight modifications to both the door and the opening in the house. We had checked everything out with the door guys before we bought the door, so they were prepared for the changes that needed to be made and they got right to work. From what I gathered, they made the door slightly shorter, added some additional framing and casing around the door, and removed some unnecessary trim above the door opening to make the new door fit like a glove.
I knew I was really going to dig the door as soon as they started installing it.
It sat there, installed yet unstained and very unfinished, until our painting crew started work on the flip – then they took a turn at our house (over the course of 3 days!) to painstakingly stain the door and paint the new, wider casing.
Even the unstained front door looked better than the old one, and we got some compliments from the neighbors.
But once it was stained? True love.
We stuck with our tried and true Dark Walnut stain by Minwax, with polyurethane in a satin finish.
We like that the door has an updated, more streamlined look as compared to our original, frilly door, but that it still looks traditional and fits in on our little ranch-style house.
We also really love the slightly obscured glass, and the fact that all of the glass is up high at the top of the door – the couch that we sit on all the time is in direct view of the front door, so we like having some privacy from the post man and everyone else that comes to the front door.
It doesn’t hurt that we’ve had buckets and buckets of rain lately (perhaps you heard about the tornadoes?), so the lawn and flowers are really popping out and helping our new front door make the house look snazzy.
Have you made any long-awaited changes to your house lately? I can’t tell you how happy I am to finally be able to check “new front door” off the list!!
