Painting The Front Door: 12 laborious steps that will freshen up your exterior while kicking your posterior!

Our new house is set back in the woods and is entirely magical. Deer, birds, lizards, caterpillars, a bubbling creek, berry bushes and 5 barefoot kids fill out the property, making the whole thing feel like you’ve entered a simpler time teeming with tranquility and life. Our front door, however, didn’t seem to convey that sense of life and youthfulness. To me, it just wasn’t the best first impression of what happily waits to welcome you on the other side.

As for choosing a color, we were a little stumped as to the best way to compliment the siding that was painted blue before we purchased the home. Blue is one of my favorite colors, but it just didn’t seem to work for the setting here. My mother-in-law first suggested a gold colored door in keeping with a Feng shui concept she had read about, and it sounded like a great idea.

So without further ado, here’s my 12 easy steps to painting a front door.

1. Watch 15 youtube tutorials until you’re convinced that painting a front door will be fast, easy and even fun. *Spoiler alert: it won’t be.
2. Drag your 5 kids to Home Depot and quickly pick out every color sample resembling gold/yellow.
3. Tape them all to the door and look at them for 3 days.
4. Finally decide on a color simply because you like its name best- Sunburst.
5. Wait until you feel a wave of ambition and energy. You’ve refinished a table. Surely a door can’t be that hard! *Spoiler alert again: Yes, yes it can.
   

   
6. Remove hardware. *This will require another 5 youtube videos on how to remove a stripped screw. You will then spend 90 minutes trying every hack suggested and fail at each one. You will then have to wait until your Marine Corps mechanic husband returns home from work and effortless removes said screw in 30 seconds flat.
7. Wait until the kids go to bed and begin priming the door under the cover of night. Swallow 2 bugs, get hit in the face by a beetle, and hear rustling in the woods that you are sure is a man-eating creature waiting to pounce.
8. Realize you will not be able to close or lock the door as it dries and go to bed wondering why that wasn’t mentioned in any of the youtube tutorials and if that man-eating creature will find its way to your bedroom.
9. Wake up the next morning and begin painting. *This will be done with a toddler holding onto your leg as you say “Don’t touch” every 30 seconds for good measure.
10. Repeat step 9 while mediating a sibling fight and meeting a new neighbor.
11. Take picture of final product-without the hardware reattached because you no longer remember which screws belong to what pieces and you’ll have to wait until your husband returns home again.
12. Resist the urge to search “cute front porch design ideas” on Pinterest, keeping you from compulsively spending all the money, and instead use your birthday money given from a friend to purchase 2 planters.