Cobalt Blue Front Door

I was "reading" a book on how to build sheds the other day, when I came across an image that has stuck with me ever since.

 

It was of this quaint old shed, goldish-yellowy-orange, with a cobalt blue door and window trim and a plethora of red flowers in pots all around it. I'm sorry I don't have a pic to share, but trust me. It was warm, fresh, inviting, and exuberantly unapologetically colorful. Loooooove the cobalt.

 

 

I decided yesterday that, frankly, front doors are huge. I mean, their impact and their ability to set the stage (or not) for the home.

On that soapbox note, here's the dreariness that greeted people to my own home for the past (insert embarrassingly high number) years:

 

 

The weird part is, the people who live inside actually do have personalities! And aren't color blind! Although the random passerby would have no clue about either case.

 

I've actually struggled with customizing our front door space for a while because the rock is a bit dated and represents a color scheme I'm not big into, but it's permanent as far as we're concerned. I also wanted a replacement front door with glass, for more natural light inside. But that would lend zero privacy to much of our upstairs, and that wasn't a great option.

 

What to do, what to do.

What I did in the end was paint the door and ignore the rock altogether. Pretend like it's not there. Because I'm nice like that.

 

So. A quick coat (or three) of blue, and you can see immediate life starting to stir within. Or without. Whatever. Not so happy were the wooden house numbers straight from the 80s. I painted them the same color as the door (obv) but soon realized my mistake. Wowsahs. 



 

I bought some great contemporary house numbers from Home Depot and was going to hang them up, but I chickened out because (a) I'd be mounting them into stone, and I've never done that before, (b) I couldn't even figure out how to take the old numbers off, and (c) I was going to royally screw up the whole thing. I mean, it's kind of a prominent place to be debuting a hammer drill.

 

So I brushed a few coats of black paint over the numbers to tide us over until I could work up the courage to deal with stone and drills and scariness like that. It's not great, but it'll do.

 

Watered some plants, which I realize now makes for a not-so-lovely photo detail. Dah well. I also had some leftover exterior yellow paint from another project, so I gave this sad pot spot a buttery facelift. (mmmm...butter...) And swapped out the welcome mat for a rug I had on-hand until I fall in love with something else to replace it.

Looking better.

 

I thought some color up top would be nice, so I dug up an old hanging basket and hung it from a metal planter-holder-upper thing mounted on the side of the house. (Didn't like how high the flowers would have been if hooked from the ceiling.) I potted some petunias and am sending them all the green-thumb vibes I can muster. Which is about two, total.

 

The lone impatien. Grow, friends!

 

 

And here we are again:

 

 

Still some things to do (like deal with that drip hose and get the flowers to bloom, baby, bloom), but I like where this is headed. It's out there, it's wild, it's bold. But what about you all? Are you a yay or nay on colorful front doors?

{shared: A Glimpse Inside, A Jennuine Life, Be Colorful, By Stephanie Lynn, C.R.A.F.T., Chic on a Shoestring Budget, Coastal Charm, Craft-O-Maniac, Crafty Texas Girls, DIY by Design, DIY Dreamer, DIY Showoff, Domestically Speaking, Dragonfly Designs, Finding Fabulous, Fireflies & Jellybeans, GingerSnap Crafts, House of Hepworths, I Should be Mopping, Ivy and Elephants, Jembellish, Lil Luna, Mercy Ink, My Girlish Whims, My Romantic Home, My Uncommon Slice, Not Just a Housewife, Sew Can Do, Simply Designing, Sugar & Dots, Sumo's Sweet Stuff, The 36th Avenue, The Shabby Creek Cottage, The Shabby Nest, The Style Sisters, }