An Easy (but Dramatic) Front Door Update
Last Updated on August 10, 2021
This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Schlage. The opinions and text are all mine.
If you've been around here a while, you know that we have finally turned more of our attention to the exterior of our house. MOST of that time and attention has been focused on our new deck (don't worry, details on that coming soon) and backyard improvements, BUT we haven't totally ignored the front of our house. We have plans to paint all of the trim on the house once the weather cools down. But we actually had a random break in the heat (2 days with a high in the low 80's, which is pretty much unheard of for June in North Carolina), so we decided to tackle an easy but super dramatic front door update while we could turn off the A/C and have a hole where our front door should be for an entire day :)
We actually love the bones of our front door and the wood is pretty. But having battled the blazing sun for 20+ years, the wood on the front of the door was almost burned. Take a look.
We started sanding it, initially thinking we would just give it a fresh stain, but I really wanted to paint it a fun color. After we sanded it down, removing the worst of the “burned” finish, we tested out some stains. Even Joe, who was really determined to stain the natural wood wasn't super excited about how the stain options were looking, so I suggested painting it again. And this time he agreed! Needless to say, I got in my car within 5 minutes of the decision being made so that I could grab some paint :)
We painted it with Velvet Curtains by Valspar. I carefully painted it with 3 thin coats. I'm smitten with the color!
With a pretty new color and fresh paint on the door, there was no way we could put the traditional hardware back on. We never liked the shape and feel of it for our contemporary house, and we haven't used a nickel finish anywhere else, so it didn't really make sense to have it on our front door. Instead, we put it in a bag to donate to the Habitat ReStore and snapped up a Schlage Century handleset with a matte black finish. Just as we expected, this small swap has made a world of a difference! And it's such a quick and easy update, which is very, very welcome when we usually find ourselves tackling much more time intensive DIYs.
Schlage’s door hardware makes installation quick and easy. If you need to drill an additional hole (which would be necessary if you are switching to a handleset from a knob)–there's a guide that comes with the handleset so you know exactly where to drill without even having to measure!
We loved our front door transformation so much that we continued the work to our DIY screen door, painting it the same color. We also swapped out the old door numbers and the hardware on the screen door, as well. Those small changes made a huge difference! We never loved the color we used on the screen door when we built it–it was just leftover interior paint. And we grabbed the old handle because it's the only one that the hardware store had in stock when we were there, so we settled, which is never a good idea! We replaced the old hardware with the Schlage Latitute lever with Century trim. Take a look at the transformation of the screen door.
Here's the before…
And the AFTER!
If you have been wanting to up the curb appeal of your house but don't have the time or budget to do anything dramatic, start with your front door! Just take a look at what a big impact some paint and new hardware makes! Schlage offers tons of different options for all styles–check out the style selector tool here.
I absolutely adore how our new and improved front door looks from the outside of our house, as well as from the inside–we still need to add a DIY door kick plate, but it's already such an improvement. It's so fun seeing it open into our DIY stenciled foyer.
Last thing before you go… Schlage is currently hosting a huge Superb Curb Appeal Sweepstakes. Enter now for a chance to win a Schlage Sense™ Smart Deadbolt, a $1000 gift-card from The Home Depot and a design consultation from home-design blogger, Our Fifth House! You can enter right here through July 16th. Good luck, friends!
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