Facelift

Last weekend, our dislike of the security door on our house finally got the better of us. We have been toying with getting a new door since we moved in. There were a few things on our list of immediate improvements, and the door was one of them. The first thing on our list was the damn lava rock in the front yard. We're not quite certain who thought it was a good idea to use lava rock when landscaping, but we made sure to take care of that as soon as possible.

Here's the before picture. Please note the ugly lava rock and the security door that your eye is immediately drawn to because of its color.

As I mentioned in previous posts, we were so fortunate to have all our family come visit once we got moved in. So not lucky for them, we put them all to work. When my mom and my sister were here, we shoveled up the lava rock in the front yard. Then, when M's dad came, they laid the sod in the front yard and put in the flag stones to get to the side entrance of the house. We not only sodded where the lava rock was, we put it about halfway to the road. It ended up looking SO MUCH better. However, now that fall is here, I think we're going to have to sod the rest of the yard. You can really tell where we sodded and where the original weeds lawn is at.

It's a little far away, but doesn't it look good?

 When we were working in the front yard, we found out that our huge tree (seen in the first picture too the left, an oak tree) needed to be trimmed. There were some of the branches that were hitting the shingles, and if that goes on too long, it shortens the life of the roof. So we had some people come in and trim the tree in the front yard and grind down the stumps in the back yard. I can't believe how much of a difference it makes. Probably we'll have to be much better about watering next year, but it should allow in more light and hopefully, the grass will grow better.

The last thing on our list was that damn door. At least it's functional; it's certainly not pretty. Unfortunately, our door is a little bit wider than most doors, so we can't just get a standard security door and install it. We had gone back and forth about getting a custom door made, but they're about $400-500, which isn't too bad, but it doesn't make a lot of sense when there's plenty of other things we'd like to do and the door still serves it's purpose. So we decided to go ahead, and just paint it. If it turned out awful, well, we weren't any worse off, and if not, then we saved some money and had a better looking house.

Before

We went ahead and just primed the door and then used the brown acrylic latex from the house (we found it in the basement) on the door. We had to do two coats and then touch up in a few places. Here's the finished product.

After

It looks so good, huh? I should mention that when we put the glass back in there, you could see the white border on two sides only. Instead of painting the border on the glass and risk painting the glass, we put white electrical tape on it. Never would have guessed? I think it's perfect too; it gives it a little bit of dimension against the dark door.

Up next, the inside door...