The House With a Blue Door

This summer we made one of those huge decisions that couples will make together: we bought a house. We had been renting a cute little duplex, but were ready to move on. Don’t get me wrong, renting was fine and totally appropriate for our first few years of marriage, but I hated the lack of permanency. I always felt like I was borrowing someone else’s space. There are so many limitations to what you can do creatively to a rental, and I so love to renovate.

The process of buying a home was a lot longer and more complex than I’d ever imagine it to be, but so worth it! We had loved this house from the first time we time we toured through it to the moment we moved in.

One of the first things I wanted to do to make our mark on our new home was paint the front door. It was a classic solid wooden door. The previous owners had replaced all the other doors in the house, but left this one for it’s character, and, boy, did it have character. Perhaps a little too much as the finish was chipping all over on the front.

So, I painted it blue.

The process of painting it was easy. I just taped around the hinges, laid some paper down so as not to drip, sanded it down a little, and painted. I went with a homemade chalk paint mixture to get that lovely matte look. So worth it. I used the recipe from “at Home with the Barkers”. It goes on so smooth and thick that I didn’t have to prime or do a second coat!

Here is how it turned out:

This was taken not too long ago with my fall decorations.

As I said, the painting didn’t take long at all, this door handle, however caused a little trouble. It wasn’t working before. When you pushed your thumb down on the latch, it would loosely fall down and nothing would happen. I decided if I was going to paint it anyway, I might as well take then entire thing off, then take it apart and see what I can do to fix it. The ancient contraption inside was fascinating. I wish I would have taken pictures to show you, alas, I had not. After much experimenting and fiddling with it, I figured out how it worked and was able to put it back together and reattach it to the door.