I finally gave my front door a makeover with Modern Masters Front Door Paint. I should probably warn you that this post is before and after picture heavy. This project has been a long time coming. We've been wanting to up the curb appeal of our home since day one and we have slowly been working on it. When I say slowly, I mean turtle speed slow. Last year we replanted some shrubs, added a little pine tree in the front, switched out the red mulch for brown mulch and called it a day. This year we replaced all the windows, happy dance!
Actual 1st Before picture. Note all the horrible dry trees and overgrown ugly shrubs
After we removed the uglies, transplanted the pretties, re-mulched and planted a pine tree.
Much better, if I do say so myself!
Pretty mulch, cute shrubs, good enough to hold us off for a year!
One year later, after adding new windows!
NOW!
A little over a month ago, just as spring was ringing in (perfect timing), I was contacted by Modern Masters to see if I wanted to try out some of their paint products. When I saw that they offered Never Fades Front Door paint I knew this would be a great opportunity to spruce up our front doors. Painting the doors also gave us the push we needed to tackle some other outdoor projects that we hadn't gotten around to.
Our house has two front door entrances which is kinda weird and one was painted blue and the other one was left untouched in its' original pre-primed state.
Before Door Number 1
Before Door Number 2
To get started on this project, I cleaned the doors with TSP, the blue door got a light sanding beforehand. I bought a quart of Zinsser Bulls Eye and had it tinted grey for the white door. The blue door did not need to be primed so I just went ahead and started painting it.
One coat of grey primer, and edging the window of the door with paint
After 1st coat of paint on primed door
After 1st coat of paint on blue door
We chose the color "Elegant" which is a rich, black shade. I shook the can really well and used a stirring stick to mix all the ingredients well. The first thing I noticed upon opening the can of Front Door Paint was that the consistency of the paint was really thick. I used a 2 inch angled brush and a 4 inch foam roller to apply the paint. The paint went on smooth, and dried quickly. One of my favorite things about this paint is that I was able to re-coat the doors after only one hour. Which meant that I could finish this project in just a few hours and the doors were fully dry and ready to close within a couple of hours of finishing painting.
My doors required 3 coats of paint for complete coverage. I did end up applying a fourth coat of paint, only because I didn't stir the paint before the third coat so the sheen was uneven.
***Tip, always stir your paint while painting and between coats so that you get a nice uniform color and sheen***
After door number 1
After door number 2
Here is their How To Paint Your Front Door video!
If you prefer the reading version here is a link to the Step by Step Instructions. Their website also has an app that you can download to help you pick out the perfect paint color for your front door and lots of other helpful information. You can purchase the paint through their online store at shop.modernmasters.com, at Home Depot online store, Amazon or check their website under find a retailer.
When I was done painting the doors I knew it was time to finally switch out our old house numbers and mailbox. We had purchased them months ago but just never got around to it. The old mailbox was very rusted and small. We updated our house numbers with some sleek, simple ones and a DIY project that I will share a how to on later.
We also changed the light fixtures by the garage. I bought those over a year ago because I found them on clearance but never really got around to changing them until now. Now that we have an idea of how we want the front of our house to look we are going to change the color of the light fixtures to match the one we will be getting for the other door.
We wanted to paint the garage door in the same color as the doors but I didn't think I had enough paint left. I really think that it will tie things up pretty nicely. So that is a project we will be doing in the future, along with some other ideas we have to spruce up the curb appeal.
Panoramic view of the front of the house
This Front Door Makeover with Modern Masters really kicked up the curb appeal of our home a notch and gave us the motivation we needed to kick start on some other outdoor projects. We have since done a few other improvements that I will be sharing soon! We are so pleased with how the curb appeal of our house is looking! Even a couple of our neighbors stopped by to say the house was looking gorgeous! This really was a perfect Memorial Day weekend project! Did anyone else work on improving the curb appeal or some other fun outdoor projects on this beautiful Memorial Day weekend?
***Thanks to Modern Masters for providing me with the Front Door paint, so that I could share my completely honest review with my readers. All thoughts and opinions stated in this post are 100% truthful and my own***
On a shopping trip to Goodwill, I spotted this vintage mahogany sideboard and snatched it up right away. It took me about a week or so to get started working on it because I couldn't decide on a color for it. My head was sniping all over the place, so I looked for inspiration in Pinterest and that made it worse because then I had a ballillion choices. I finally had a vision in my head of how I wanted the piece to look. My gut was telling me to paint it in a dark charcoal grey with the middle section in a light grey and stain the top.
I started by sanding the top finish off completely working my way from coarse, to medium, to fine grit sand paper for a smooth finish. I gave the body a light sanding with fine grit too. Then I filled some spots where the veneer was missing. Rustoleum's Kona gave the top a nice, even tone. I mixed my own chalk paint for this piece. After a few coats of each color, I let the paint dry over night and came back the next day and sanded the whole piece to remove any bumps and lightly distress the edges. I sealed the bottom portion with Minwax polycrylic in satin and the top in gloss finish.
I liked the original hardware but I wanted to remove the years of tarnish, to give them a fresher look. I used Bar Keepers Friend, it was working quite well. They were a nice brassy color underneath, unfortunately two of the hardware pieces had a silver tone to them. I needed another solution so I thought about using Rub and Buff. I've never used it before but read good things about it. I went to two different craft stores near by and neither of them carried it. One of them had a similar product called Metallic Luster. I bought it, took it home and tried it out but it was a bust. It didn't work for me, it was too much of a bright gold and the finish was translucent. Maybe I didn't do it right, I don't know. Anyhow I finally found Rub and Buff at Hobby Lobby and it worked like a charm.
The decorative trim from the top back was missing so I picked up a piece of 1x2 at Home Depot. My hubby cut it for me and then I screwed it in from the back, stained it and sealed it. I also added some wooden corner pieces as supports to give it more stability since it is such a top heavy piece.
I am totally in love with how this Charcoal Grey mahogany Sideboard came out. I wish I had a bigger house so that I could keep it! I say that a lot but it's not true, I actually love that our house is not so big, it's perfect for us. I guess what I mean is, I wish I needed it or had a spot for it at home, but I don't so hopefully this vintage beauty finds a perfect home soon.
A few months ago I shared our dining room with you guys and talked about some possible changes we would be making in the space for the future. Yesterday I shared our new dining table and chairs, today I want to review our original to do list for the dining room updates. Let's see what has gotten done, what still needs to get done, and what ideas have been added or changed.
Dining Room To Do List
First, remove the little black mirror by the shelves, seeing these pictures I'm now sure, I hate it there.
Sand, prime, paint the trims and window (you can see the blue tape where I started).
Buy chairs I am not sure what style but they need to be comfy, strong, durable and easy to clean.
Build or buy dining table, I think I want to rebuild the same modern farmhouse dining table we built for our our previous house but tweaking it a bit so that crumbs don't get stuck in the crannies.
Replace the grey cabinet with something similar to the ones I mentioned earlier in the post.
Maybe add a jute or sisal rug, I am not 100% I want to do that yet. I think it would add some nice texture and feel a little bit more layered and warm but at the same time I love the ease of sweeping and moping hardwood floors, and you know how crumbs and spills just happen with kiddos.
Adding some horizontal shiplap would be nice too. Another maybe... we did recently paint this room so I could see my husband cringe at the thought of having to repaint but he is a wood man so I think he might like the idea.
Updates on the list
The first one was an easy one, I did that almost immediately after publishing that post. I simply replaced it with the rattan mirror that was over the grey cabinet. I gave the black mirror to my sister and it fits perfectly over her little entryway table in her home.
We replaced the window with an energy efficient vinyl window so there is no need for painting the window anymore. However we still have yet to paint all the surrounding trim. Need to get on that pronto!
Number six and seven are still marinating! The idea of having a nice textured rug is nice but not the maintenance it requires. We've recently adopted a puppy and we are working hard at potty training but she still has little accidents here and there.
Like I said still marinating on the ship lap walls. It would be nice to add some character to the house but maybe farther down the line. We have lots of other projects that need to get done around the house that have more priority.
I would like to add that the light fixture needs to be centered, and tweaked a little.
Overall I feel like the dining room is finally starting to come together, especially since we have most of our main furniture pieces. I'm going to set small goals to finish it up all the dining room updates. Like one week will be about finishing the trim, the next will be for building the bench and so on. Soon I will have a dining room update where all the things on the list will be crossed off except for number six and seven, those will come later. For now I'm really enjoying the small dining room updates we've made but I'm looking forward to getting it done!
