With the front door finished, I moved on to the porch door. This one is a Houseworks door and it’s a totally different style than the other door and the windows.

I’d already cut the pediment off the top, which left the door frame looking kind of plain, especially compared to the fancy front door. To dress it up a bit, I decided to add the bottom porch stoop piece from Kit B as a cap at the top, and the bottom trim pieces from Kit B. (Added bonus: adding trim to the top of the door hides the fact that the hole wasn’t quite square at the top!)

I also popped out two little square pieces that are supposed to go on top of the newel posts to use as trim at the top of the door. But partway through painting all the pieces, I got the idea to cut off the bottoms of Kit B’s front door corner trim instead.

Here are all the pieces painted. The stripes aren’t perfect—especially the one furthest to the right, which I painted first. I tried to get purple paint into the crack between the stripes and it didn’t work out too well, so I was careful not to repeat that mistake for the other stripes. After a few rounds of touch-ups I decided that no amount of repainting was going to make it better and I can live with it. (This is a rare case where it looks worse in the pictures than in person. I hope so anyway!)

The two doors complement each other nicely. You wouldn’t necessarily know that one came with the kit and the other didn’t.

Continue reading

The Rosedale has an awesome front door. In fact, along with the stairs, the door is probably my favorite part of this house. Its trim is made up of several separate pieces layered on top of each other, so unlike a Houseworks door, it’s super easy to use multiple paint colors without making a big mess.

I’m using Glidden’s Sandy Feet and Antique Purple (same colors I used for the window trim and shutters, respectively), along with a dark blue named Blue Gray Slate. Below you can see which pieces are painted which colors (along with the huge pile of brackets on deck to be painted…)

As I was painting these, I realized the top of the door has some trim I’d neglected to punch out. (That’s what happens when you don’t follow the instructions!) These are referred to as the “door stoop” pieces, and they sandwich the piece that sticks out of the house. Had I realized this sooner, I wouldn’t have done such a careful job painting the top of the part that sticks out of the house!

Continue reading