{House}: Shut the Front Door.

Have you heard people saying "shut the front door" as a phrase for "no way" or "get out of here" lately? I have and I think it is hilarious. So when thinking of what to title my post about our front door, I naturally thought "shut the front door!"

With that out of the way, the real story is that we stained our front door. It was touch and go there for a little while, not sure what to do, paralyzed by indecision. As you may recall, we were playing the "stain or paint" game.

Here's what we were working with before, unfinished:

Finally I decided to stain the door, thinking that if I didn't like it, I could always paint over stain but not stain over paint. So on a whim one Sunday I decided to get my stain on. This involved hitting up my favorite Midtown Home Depot:

The first thing we did was take all the hardware off the door. Jake assured me he knew how to put it back on... but it was a bit scary to think about what would happen if he couldn't.

After taking the jewelry off my pretty door, I sanded it with a fine sandpaper and then used tack cloths to get the dust off. Key step. My mom says so.

After that I used a clean (old) t-shirt to apply pre-stain conditioner. You definitely want to use pre-stain conditioner. It makes everything even and happy.

Then it was finally time to be ready for the stain. I used more pieces of the t-shirt to apply the stain. One for putting the stain on, one for rubbing the extra off. This was one and a half coats into the process:

And this was after 3 coats and a layer of poly (put on with a foam brush):

At that point we had to leave the house to go see Skyfall (ridiculously awesome in case you were wondering) so we didn't touch the back of the door. And Jake got to put his claims to the test in doubletime as he put the door back together on a deadline:

So about 2 hours, one t-shirt, a can of stain, and some extremely messy hands later, I had a stained front door.

Not going to lie, I was freaking out for a bit. Thought I messed it up. Thought it looked streaky, too dark, like a hot mess.

Now, a few weeks later, I'm pretty much digging it. I still need to do the other side but I think I'm going to keep it stained not painted. We've got enough color in the accessories and I like the idea of the stain.

And I know I say this after every outside improvement, but now that the door is stained, the chipped front porch and the wrought iron are REALLY bothering me. #can'twaittofixthat #spendingtoomuchtimeoninstagramandtwitter #whatyoudon'ttalkinhashtags?

Time to gather enough energy to finish the back of the door!

In stain and home improvement,