The front door... part one

Or maybe this is part three or four since I've been working on it everyday since Saturday.  We are waiting around for the new siding to come in so I thought this weekend would be a good time to give our front door some love.  We replaced a beat up steel door with a Douglas fir door that I stained years ago. 

There were ugly metal awnings above the door and windows that we took down about a second after we got the keys.  Mr. 65th added the molding and trim to cover the damage from taking the awning down and to beef up the entry a bit.  This will all be removed to add the portico. 

I didn't put enough coats of varnish on the door when I originally stained it and neglected to keep up on the maintenance so it wasn't looking very good lately.  Saturday I started out by giving the door a good sanding to remove any varnish so I could re-stain it with a richer color.  Things didn't go as planned though.  The picture above shows how it looked after I stained the two panels.  The stain was sticking to the bare spots and looked terrible.  I would need to strip the entire door down to bare wood in order to get even coverage again.

Going into this project I had a feeling it might not work out and that I might end up painting the exterior side of the door.  I was ok with this but I had to try to salvage it first.  Mr. 65th pointed out that most of the exterior pictures I have saved for inspiration had painted doors and not to feel guilty about it.  Good point. 

I used a tinted primer and started my first coat of black paint...so far so good.  Or so I thought.

Here it is as of this morning with two coats of paint.  I can still here myself telling Mr. 65th as I left for the paint store...."I'm off to find the perfect black color!"  Well guess what?  This is not the perfect black for this project.  I used Black Jack by Benjamin Moore.

It looks black from the street but inside it looks a bit navy blue or really dark gray.  Can you see what I mean in relation to the black frame?  I'm such a silly goose...I have no idea why I needed to get fancy with the color.  I went back to the paint store today and picked up more paint.  It's the perfect color called.... Black.  I'll be back with a few more pictures.

Artwork from a book

I wanted to pop in and say hello before we head out for a late summer vacation to Michigan. No progress on the exterior of the house just yet...we made some changes to the plan so that delayed things quite a bit. I'm hoping work will get started in the next few weeks. We have been planning this since April so I am ready to go! I will be so excited to see the work trucks pull up in front of our house for once...we are  DIYers so it will be fun to watch the progress without breaking a sweat.

Today I wanted to share one of my favorite books with you...

A book that has great artwork. A book that might make you want to rip out some of the pages

to frame.

One that even looks pretty sitting on a table top.

This fabulous book was a gift for my birthday back in the spring...I had big plans for it the second I saw it.

Remember the hallway project we started ages ago? If not you can read about it here  and  here.  It's been forever I know. I was just about finished when we started making exterior plans so it fell by the wayside.

Anyway, I have a few of these prints sitting on the new beadboard ledge in the hallway. I found the frames at Michaels for three dollars a piece. Can you believe that? Three dollars! At first I thought I might paint them but once the prints were inside I really liked the frames as is. 

I will share pictures of the completed room later next week when we get back. Cross my heart. Oh, and the book was bought at Barnes and Noble, just incase you wanted to hunt one down for yourself.