The Amazing Difference a Colorful Front Door Can Make (Plus, a Painting Tip for Painting Doors with Windows, and the Keypad Door Knob I Chose)

Some days I really feel like I’m completely unstoppable in relation to making progress on initiatives. Different days, it’s all I can do to get a entrance door painted and change out a door knob. However when a painted entrance door makes such an enormous distinction, even that small activity will be fairly thrilling! Plus, I’ve marked off two extra gadgets from my 2025 checklist of dwelling targets, and that alone is fairly motivating for me. Typically it pays to get these small duties achieved simply with the intention to mark these off your checklist. That feeling of accomplishment in seeing these initiatives being checked off of the checklist is commonly so motivating for tackling the larger initiatives.

For my workshop, I selected the identical shade for the entrance door that I’ve used on the doorways of our home — Benjamin Moore Chicken of Paradise. However this time, I had it shade matched at Sherwin Williams since that’s the place I went to buy the paint for the shutters. The colour match was good, and this shade makes me smile each time I see it.

And right here it’s with the blue shutters and the brand new coral entrance door…

And the way sort of my candy little stray kitty to pose for me, proper? 😀 He loves hanging round once I working outdoors.

This shade is absolutely saturated, and as is commonly the case with actually saturated colours (particularly something that’s crimson or red-adjacent), it took three coats to cowl the whole lot. After the primary coat, it was wanting fairly streaky.

Two coats lined fairly nicely on many of the door, however there have been nonetheless streaky areas across the home windows, so I went forward and did a 3rd coat. Three coats lined completely, and it didn’t take lengthy in any respect. The primary coat took about quarter-hour, and the 2 subsequent coats solely took about 10 minutes every.

I opted to tape off the home windows as a substitute of utilizing the paint-on window masks that you simply peel off after portray (which is what I used once I painted the French doorways behind the studio). Since I wished to do that rapidly, taping truly went a lot sooner, and I didn’t have to attend the hour or so to attend for the paint-on masks to dry earlier than portray the door. Taping the home windows off solely took about quarter-hour.

The important thing to fast taping of home windows is to place the tape straight throughout (which you’ll see on the high left of the picture under), after which return with a razor blade and reduce the tape at an angle to take away the surplus tape. That provides you good corners each time.

Right here’s one other take a look at what the door appeared like after only one coat. You possibly can see how streaky it seems to be even from a distance. It wasn’t fairly. 😀

I wished to place a keypad lock on the door so I can entry the workshop any time moderately than having to enter my studio and get the keys each time I wished entry to the workshop, and since this door solely has one doorknob and no deadbolt, the choices have been fairly slim. Most keypad locks are for deadbolts and never doorknobs. So I ended up going with this Honeywell digital door knob that I discovered at Lowe’s. It’s nothing fancy. It doesn’t have wifi capabilities, so there’s no app that controls it. It’s only a easy contact pad lock, which is what I wished for the workshop.

It was extremely easy to put in (it took about 5 minutes), and up to now, I like it! Programming a brand new entry code took one other 5 minutes. The directions have been very clear and simple.

In order that’s two extra initiatives crossed off!

I’m glad that I had a few simple initiatives that I might do and test off the checklist as a result of the subsequent venture — including skirting across the backside of the workshop — is just not a fast and straightforward venture. However that’s the venture that can take this workshop to the subsequent stage.

Addicted 2 Adorning is the place I share my DIY and adorning journey as I transform and beautify the 1948 fixer higher that my husband, Matt, and I purchased in 2013. Matt has M.S. and is unable to do bodily work, so I do nearly all of the work on the home on my own. You can learn more about me here.