Last year I asked you to weigh in on my door dilemma: paint the existing door (which Hubs and I didn't love), save up for an expensive, mid-century style door that we did love, or buy an affordable replacement that was better, but not perfect.
Here's the door we had:
At the time, I had a voting widget embedded in the post and 75% of you thought I should just paint the existing door, while 20% said keep questing (although some of you cheated and said paint the door and keep questing). There were some great comments too, with some excellent ideas, and I am so thankful for the sound advice.
In the end, I took your advice and painted our existing door aqua, using Beauti-Tone's Cyan Sky (C13-3-0681-4).
Paint was a fabulous, budget-friendly way to spruce up the old door. In a bright and cheery shade of aqua, it already made me smile, but I have to admit that we still didn't love it. As luck would have it, I recently had the opportunity to partner with a Canadian home improvement store to help our little lake house make a better first impression.
Although we lived with the aqua-painted original door for about a year, these days we're greeted by this beauty:
You'll never guess where it's from...
Home Hardware! Canadians, are you a little surprised? I kept ogling Crestview Doors, thinking that was the only option for an exterior door with mid-century style. I was so wrong! The floor models at our local Home Hardware store are very traditional, but once we started to peruse catalogs for special order doors, we found a bevy of modern exterior doors, including the door we ordered - the Linea, by Standard Doors. (It's from the Sophistica Collection).
The Linea has the mid-century feel we wanted, plus it lets a lot of light into our formerly dark and windowless hallway. The glass is deceptive because it actually provides a lot of privacy by completely blurring any shapes more that a foot or so away from the door. It actually rates a 9/10 for privacy in the brochure. So although you can tell from outside if someone is standing right in front of the door, you can't see what (or who) is inside the house from outside.
It was professionally painted, courtesy of Home Hardware, using Beauti-Tone's Cyan Sky. I liked the original shade of aqua from Beauti-Tone so much that I wanted to use it again for this door. It was painted with an alkyd (oil) primer, followed up with a trim and door topcoat, from Home Hardware.
We had already replaced the old door hardware with a nice brushed silver knob and lock set, so we just moved that over to the new door.
The hallway has seen a lot of changes: we've painted the walls and trim white, updated the light fixtures, thermostat and smoke detectors, and also the door hardware. It's a much brighter, happier space now! Some more changes might be on the horizon, though, because we've considered replacing the linoleum floor in the entry (and kitchen, laundry room, and powder room). We originally thought we'd put it off until we renovate those spaces and we invest in something like tile or concrete, but it's been driving me nuts so we've been looking at affordable options for the interim.
What a difference a door makes!
Thanks to Home Hardware for providing the Linea door and the Beauti-Tone paint. I really shouldn't be surprised that I found something so stylish at Home Hardware because that's also where we purchased the fabulous green glass vessel sink in the townhouse - we were so smitten with it, we drove to a neighboring town to purchase it! I wasn't paid or prompted to provide a positive review - it's pretty much a given that an aqua door with a mid-century feel will get my approval :)
