This is a an old dresser from my parents’ old house, my childhood home. When they moved into their new house they got rid of a ton of furniture that they’ve had literally my entire life. Neil and I are very fortunate to be in possession of these new-to-us pieces because we needed more furniture in our new house, they’re all solid wood and built very well, AND they were free! Of course, as you can tell, this particular piece needed some work.

Neil and I spent the month between escrow and moving in re-doing this old dresser and an old frame for a full size bed. Both for the guest bedroom so both were heavily sanded, patched up, primed, and painted a semi-gloss bright white. They both turned out beautifully!

Once we moved into our new house we discovered two things about the existing front door. One was that there were 15 thousand layers of old paint, the top layer being brown. And two, that the new door handle hardware we bought for all three doors wouldn’t fit correctly on the front door. And we found this out only after attempting to put it on anyway, resulting in a huge hole that would most likely not deter home invaders. Yikes! So we hit up the local Home Depot (we’d already checked Lowes to find they didn’t have what we were looking for at the price we were hoping to spend) and purchased a beautiful white steel door and frame. It was pretty much love at first sight…. once I saw the price tag! But I have been dreaming of a certain color front door for a long time now, so the first thing to do was paint it!

Neil and his dad spent two whole days removing the old door and attaching the new one. Probably could have been accomplished in just one, however, they soon found out that the house was built around the door it seems. Now, whether this is true or not…I highly doubt it. I think it was just their way of exaggerating how hard it was to take the old front door out. Of course, as with any DIY project, they ran into a few snags. One being the spacing for our new door was different than the old, among other things…

Another DIY project infliction: in the process of fixing one thing, we broke another. So we removed the existing interior casing for the front door and will very soon be adding the new casing, which I happen to love so it’s kind of a win-win!

I think it looks SO much better now! What do you think?

Old…

New…

And of course, the whole reason we needed a new front door to begin with: the new hardware! Gorgeous, no? And lastly, I leave you with what the interior of the front door looks like today.