It’s official, my friends… after over 2 years of living with a front door that opens directly into a wall (and creating a very awkward situation for all our guests) we FINALLY have a front door that opens the right way! Not to mention, no more fancy glass or brass accents!
Here is the BEFORE picture:
A couple PROGRESS pictures:
And the AFTER pictures — with a little dust and dirt left behind on the porch:
The whole installation process took approximately 2 hours… and since the door was delivered a couple weeks later than we had planned, we finally installed our new door less than 48 hours before freezing temperatures and about 10″ of snow hit West Michigan!
Thankfully, I had the door all painted and ready to go before we installed it — otherwise, it definitely would have been too cold to paint it out in the elements and I would have been stuck with a white door until spring.
And speaking of painting the door….
Several weeks ago, I asked my Facebook friends for suggestions as to what color we should paint our front door. Dave and I both really love the idea of a non-matching but still coordinating front door color (like red!); however, we weren’t sure we could pull off a red door since our shutters, our roof, and all our other doors are painted a dark green.
Many people seemed to think red (or another color) would work fine — but since we were running short on time and just wanted to make sure it looked good right now, we opted to stick with the original green color. There’s a good chance that we might change things up in the future… but for this winter, we’re very thankful for our green door that opens the right way!
The photo above is what I shared on Facebook — obviously, we ended up going with the door on the bottom right. So far, we are extremely happy with our selection!
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As I was thinking of writing this post and how excited I was to have our new front door, I realized that over the past few months, we’ve changed every single entrance point of our home, garage, and outbuilding in some way.
Obviously, the new front door is one of the more noticeable changes…. but the mudroom addition on the back of the house was also a fabulous reason to get a brand new back door.
Yes, I finally got around to painting that door too!
Then we had our deck project with a wider staircase that made it even easier to access the double doors to our office. Not to mention I did a little touch-up paint on the door, meticulously cleaned all the windows, and installed new brushed nickel door handles to match the rest of our new doors.
And speaking of new door knobs and handles — we figured now would be a good time to replace all our very flashy (and chipped) brass door knobs with more subdued brushed nickel knobs and handles.
Since we replaced all the doorknobs for our house, garage, and outbuilding, it was a large expense… but it’s SO nice to have everything matching and to have one key work for every single door (we had them all keyed the same — which was a free service at Lowes).
It definitely simplifies things around our house — plus, they look so much nicer!
Since the door took a bit longer than expected to arrive, I was getting nervous that we might not get it installed before cold weather hit our area — thankfully, the weather held off and we’ll be able to enjoy our new door all winter long!
Here’s one more before and after picture…
Camille says
I think a red front door would look amazing if you ever wanted to switch it up. Just look at how those red chairs pop against the white siding and dark green roof!
Heart and Haven says
The new door looks great. I think the more simple glass panes matches your style much better than the original door too.
I see you changed out all your door knobs too! We recently did that for our interior door knobs…NOTHING matched (like silver knob on interior & gold on exterior of the SAME door, lol!) We went with oil rubbed bronze knobs w/back plates & love them (we replaced the hinges on the doors, many of which were either painted over or rusty! It looks so much better now! I didn’t have the budget to replace the front door set, so I spray painted it oil rubbed bronze for now.
Ann says
Could I see a picture of the inside now that it is done. (One without all the plastic in the way?)
Denise Z says
Great choices–both the door and the color! What a difference something like that can make–like jewelry on the house. (And I have that same striped door mat! LOL!)
Ashley says
I love the color of your door! What is the name of the paint you used?
Andrea says
Thanks Ashley — we always use Behr paint. However, there’s not a “name” for my paint as it was just color matched to our shutters 🙂
Leslie says
Andrea, I love how your door looks! I have several to paint, and I have a question. Do your doors have plastic inserts to give the “pane” look? If so, did you paint these?? Our doors’ inserts are a yukky yellow and I’m tempted to paint them but worry that the paint will come off of them very easily. Thanks!
Andrea says
Our “grates” are inside the glass so they can’t be painted. However, the doors on our garage have the grates on the outside… and I would definitely recommend painting them. Your door will look SO much better!
Also, don’t worry about taping off each individual pane of glass. Just paint carefully, let dry for a couple of days, and then come back with a straight-edge razor blade and scrape off any paint that got on the glass. It works like a charm and is a million times easier than taping everything off!
Laurel says
Did you guys change out the locks and doorknobs yourselves or did Lowe’s do it? If you did it yourselves, was it difficult?
Andrea says
Lowes re-keyed everything (it took them about an hour) so all the locks used the same key. I know it’s possible to do that ourselves too, but it was a free service and I got groceries while I waited 🙂
We installed everything ourselves. I’ve installed MANY door knobs and locks over the years — it’s super easy if you just follow the instructions in the package!
Susan says
Very nice looking! This actually gave me an idea about our back door, which is identical to your mudroom door. If I paint it black, what color should the storm door be? Thanks for your advice! I always love your taste!
Andrea says
Oh guy… I don’t know. I personally don’t like storm doors because I don’t like having to open 2 doors to get inside (so we removed our storm doors when we got new doors). I honestly don’t even know what to suggest because I think it would depend on the type of storm door you have and what look you’re going for — maybe black to match the door?
Julie says
Did you paint the door yourselves? If so, would you explain a little bit about how you did it. We have two entrance doors to paint and I was going to have them done by someone else but the estimate was so high. I was wondering if I could tackle it myself.
Thank you!
Katie Payano says
I, too, would LOVE to know how you painted your doors!
Andrea says
Yup, I painted the doors myself (and it only took about an hour). I just used exterior paint (Behr from Home Depot), a brush, and a small foam roller. Cut it, roll over, let dry, repeat, and done!
Joy says
Now let us know how many times you go to open the door the old way 🙂
Andrea says
haha — we did it several times the first few days but have now adjusted 🙂
Siobhan says
Looks so nice! I really want to paint my entrance doors and this motivating me to do it…I also love the Pinterest pic 🙂
Andrea says
Thanks!! painting an entry door is such a fast, simple, and inexpensive way to totally transform the look of a house. You should do it!!
Edie says
So fresh and pretty! I recently had to make a decision on doors for the house my husband and I are building, and chose something very similar, except with a transom above. I love it sooo much now that it has been installed!
Andrea says
Oh, I would LOVE to have a transom above — but that would have been a massive amount of work since we would have needed to completely redo the header. I’m sure your door looks amazing!
Tammy @ SkipperClan says
SO beautiful! I’ve been wondering how this was going since you posted the choices. We are looking at replacing our sliding doors with some that have blinds built into the panes, especially since we hope to make this a rental home some day.
Andrea says
Thanks Tammy — it’s in, and we finished it before the snow… yay!!
Dave was interested in trying the blinds inside the glass, but then we both decided we didn’t want that for our front door. We would probably be more interested in something like that for our back door though.