The Great Door Project of 2011: Part 1

That's right-- I knew as soon as we painted the French doors on the back of the house that our disgusting front and side doors just wouldn't cut it.  Here's a refresher of the side door grossness, taken when we changed the locks:

On Saturday, I painted the black door jambs on both doors, thinking that was all I was going to paint.  I washed them down, sanded them with 80 grit sandpaper, wiped them once more, and used wood filler to spackle the yuckiest holes before painting on the first coat.  I had to get a little creative with our ghetto-fied speaker cable (it goes from our living room sound system to two speakers on our back patio), so I used packaging tape to attach it to the door.

And of course, about thirty minutes after my first coat, we got a summer thunderstorm (20% chance rain in the summer I guess should mean "no matter what you think, it's gonna rain at some point in the afternoon").

But the jambs weren't too much worse for the wear.  Our front door is underneath an overhang that shielded it from too much damage, and the side door just had some dirt kicked up on it.  Nothing I couldn't handle the next day with another wipe down and some fine grit sanding to get rid of anything that hung onto the still-a-little-sticky paint.  After another coat, the jambs were set.

Then we had to choose a color for the doors.  I knew I definitely wanted to stay red (it looks so good against our brick, and I think that red doors are so warm and welcoming), so we compared some options from Lowe's Valspar line.  I just chopped up the cards so we could look at them on both doors.  From top to bottom, we compared Fabulous Red (1011-2), Cut Ruby (1009-4), and Radiant Red (1009-3).  You can't necessarily tell it in these pictures, but in real life the top color is an orange-y red and the bottom two are more cranberry.

 Side door on the left, front door on the right

 Stay tuned for Part 2 of The Great Door Project of 2011 next Tuesday!

P.S.  Don't those jambs look hot?