My first client! Garage door #2

So after I finished my own garage door a friend had mentioned it to one of her classmates who was also upgrading their first home on a budget & happened to live in my neighborhood. I wish I had a before pic of their house, it started out with a similar color scheme to mine - cream with sea-foam green trim. I don't know if one painter booked jobs in our entire neighborhood back in the 80's or what. Anyway, they painted their house this deep charcoal gray with a crisp white trim & wanted to do something other than just a plain painted garage door. After checking out my door they decided to go with the same idea. Only they wanted to go with a color that matched their front door. I have to give April (also my client's name) credit for doing all the color research on her own. She was smart in going with a color that was very close to an unstained natural wood (shown here). She used Behr Exterior Flat Medium Base Mate in "Sand Point" for the base coat. I went over after it had dried to apply the stain.

This is the color we came out with when it was done - almost an exact match to her front door! Again, April (the homeowner) chose the stain color; Varathane Gel Stain in "Ipswich Pine". We started with a sample board to see how close to the front door this stain color came out. Once April decided that she liked it we got to work with some over sized soft bristle brushes. That's right she helped me do the entire door, luckily for me she took right to it & did an awesome job! April & her husband are total DIYers & the amount of work they've done by themselves is amazing. We randomly alternated panels so that you wouldn't notice a difference between one side of the door or the other.

A little bit closer shot of the texture - sorry these pics are kind of small this was the best I could do. This door actually had a"wood grain" impression in the fiberglass. I wasn't sure how the stain would take to it, we just went with the "grain" & it came out perfectly.

The final shot is a view from the street & was meant to show how close in color the 2 doors are, because the front door is in a shaded area, you can't really tell but believe me it's CLOSE! The pics also look a little more reddish here than it does in person. I have to say, I usually lean towards darker stains myself, but this was the perfect color choice to warm up that deep charcoal. Just imagine how awesome it'll look when they get all the new landscaping in! I learned so much doing this door, it was a lot easier than I had first expected. Can't wait for the next one!


And to the Montgomerys- Thank you for being so awesome & easy to work with!!!

Reunited at last

Do all my recent posts make it seem like I have an obsession with doors lately? Maybe just this one. I followed this thing around like I was stalking it. It was love at first sight when I first laid eyes on it at Re-Store, but I was too much of a cheapskate to pay up on the $65 price tag. After a few weeks it disappeared. That's when I started obsessing over it, I would never find another door like that. With all it's random sized squares & carved scroll detail in the center. I looked & looked but there was nothing even close I could find to replace it. Then, about a month later, I was walking through the landscape exhibits with my family at the fair and there it was.......it had been used as part of a backdrop for an outdoor display made from re-purposed materials. After several calls to the fairgrounds to try to get contact info. for the group who did the display I finally got a call saying that they had picked up the display that morning & donated the door back to Re-Store!! This time I had no problem spending $65 if it meant I finally got to take it home. It's been in my garage for a few weeks now & it's finally time to pull this sucker out & transform it. The only thing is, I'm not going to use it as a door........any guesses on what it's going to be?

This is a closer shot of the scroll detail that I love, on most doors this would be carved into the door. This is actually pops out kind of 3-D -ish I think it makes it look like higher quality.

This is the backside of the door, and the color it was when I first saw it (Olivia's off to the side checking it out). The group that used it for their display painted the aqua finish on the front only. Although I'm going to refinish the whole thing, the aqua will be making another appearance. Hint; it will only be used as an accent this time, have you figured it out yet? I'm hoping to get it built today & refinished within the next couple. Might be kind of ambitious but check back, I'll post as I go.

More Faux Wood Doors

Im posting this as a follow up to my "wood " garage doors this is obviously the before shot with all the crazy colors we started with. This was the closest view I have of the front doors before.

This is how they came out after the walnut glaze treatment (if you're really observant you might have noticed the difference in the fence color between the two pics-all we did was pressure wash it!) These are just inexpensive metal doors that have a smooth surface so I gave them some character with the "wood textured" look.

The close up shows more of the "grain" we finished it off with a $3 oil rubbed bronze doorknob I found at Re-Store (an awesome resource that I plan to feature an entire page for sometime soon).

Although you don't see the door from this point, it still gives a pretty dramatic before & after from this angle of the house. In this shot you can still see the mossy green we tried out before the terra-cotta & the ugly old light fixture-this was also replaced with a Re-Store find. A $4 brass lantern that I gave a rusty brown finish to.

This just goes to show, faux wood doors or not what a HUGE difference color makes. Stay posted, I'll have another garage door Revamp soon. Mine actually led to me getting my first "client" through word of mouth from a friend. Theirs is completely different, I'll have pics up within the next few days.

I'm linking to Power of Paint Party over at Domestically Speaking. As well as these parties;

"Wood" garage doors

So, for those of you who've never seen it, here's a picture of how hideous our house was when we bought it. Someone actually chose that paint color combination....wow. Even through the total mess it was, we still saw potential & were so happy to be buying our first house. My Dad arranged for a painter to show up (as a total surprise to us) one day & told us to pick out a color for the house. The best house warming gift ever! I had been painting different swatches of mossy green all over the house but at the last minute changed my mind & went with a terra-cotta because I thought it was closer to the Mediterranean look we were going for. Needless to say the 80's powdery blue garage doors weren't gonna be able to hang with the new colors we chose. I always imagined that whenever I was able to buy my own house it I would have a rich dark wooden garage door put in.......have you ever priced those things?! You could easily spend thousands of dollars just for a "basic" style, that's not to mention the maintenance & upkeep involved. So I did what I've done with pretty much everything else in our house, I figured out a "poor girls" version of what I really wanted but couldn't afford. After about a month of driving through all the "dream house neighborhoods" in town looking for ideas I came up with the look I wanted & figured out how to replicate it.

I started by having our painter spray the garage door the same color as the stucco. I figured that because I was planning on going with such a dark stain that I would need a rich warm color as my base coat. This picture shows the top three panels of the door completed & the bottom panel with the original base color.

Here's a view a little closer up to show the "wood grain" finish. Because I was going for more of a a rustic look I varied the stain application quite a bit so that there were darker & lighter sections. I think it makes it look more like natural wood.

This shot doesn't show as much detail but it gives a good idea of the contrast between the terra-cotta paint & the walnut stain. The terra-cotta color was a custom blended color based on one of Lowes Valspar colors I think it was called Rustic Oak in a flat exterior finish. The stain was Varethane's Walnut. By the way, the bottom panel of the door is finished now.

Bedside table revamp

I got this little table from my brother's girlfriend her mom had given it to her & she wasn't going to use it anymore so thought maybe I could do something with it. It sat in my attic for a couple months until after a trip to my sister's new house. We were talking about how she needed some furniture for her guest room, she told me about a little antiqued bedside table she found. It reminded me that I had this little one waiting around in the attic. The table itself was in good shape, the finish just looked dated.

There was a little wear on the table top, it sanded out easily. I then roughed up the table with a 3M sanding scrub pad so that the paint would adhere properly. I used two cans of Rustoleum Antique White in a satin finish. Once it had a nice solid coat of the paint I went back & distressed it by sanding in different spots & then finished it with Valspar's Mocha glaze. I applied the glaze with a sponge brush & then wiped the excess off with a cotton rag.

Here's the finished product, it doesn't stand out so well against my 80's white tile & straw colored walls but you get the idea.

This shot shows the finish a little better, the edges of the table were rubbed down with sandpaper & then wiped over with the glaze. It came out a little more "country" looking than what I was expecting, I thought the glaze would be more of a chocolate brown-it actually had more of a reddish tint to it. I think next time I use it I'll add a little black to tone the red down. I couldn't find a drawer pull I liked so I just sprayed the original knob with Krylon's Oil Rubbed Bronze paint.

So here it is in my sisters guestroom, she's been doing a lot of work on her house so the carpets have been removed so they can install new flooring. But I think it coordinates nicely with the bedding. And because it's been handed through about 4 family members I guess it counts as an heirloom? Maybe if it's still around in 70 yrs, but it already looks like it could be.
Total cost for this re-do about $7.00