A Pop of Color....

It is hard to scroll through the Home Décor section on Pinterest without seeing lots of pins of painted front doors.  I didn't realize my front door was boring until recently.  Here is proof, my before picture:

Driving around my neighborhood I saw lots of painted front doors. Most were actually red or a dark wine color.  I wanted the color to pop.  At first my thought was a navy blue, but I decided on a dark aqua color.

I have no patience so I immediately headed to Lowe's for paint and supplies.   I opted for exterior paint since it would be exposed to some wind, rain, and snow.  Well of course they only had the gallon size left in exterior paint.  Due to my non-existent patience, I bought a gallon.  I convinced myself I would use it on another project.   Aqua exterior paint....ok, sure I would.

But there was one problem.  This was 2 days before Thanksgiving and I live in Minneapolis.  My front door was frozen, there was no way I was going to be able to paint it.  Paint buying fail.

So it sat and sat in my closet until it finally warmed up....5 months later.

During my 5 month waiting period, I stumbled upon this little gem.

You can find these twine covered letters on Etsy for $25-$40, but it looked easy enough to recreate.   I found the paper mache letter, twine, and the ribbon at Jo-Ann Fabrics and the flower accents at Michaels.

This one was actually pretty time consuming to do!  I realized that having a last name that started with and S was not very advantageous as I tried to maneuver the curves.  Here are my tips if you try this one:

• Be prepared for twine lint.  I have a dark brown couch and had little fuzzies everywhere.
• I started with the flat part of the end of the S.  I covered that in little pieces across the top since I knew I would be covering the rest as I started the main part of the letter.
• I used Tacky Glue to hold the twine in place at the start.
• The corners/curves can be tricky and I had to double up in some sections to keep the twine straight once I got out of the curves.

After I was all done I thought to myself people are crazy to sell these for only $25!  I felt like it took forever to wrap that sucker.   For the decorations I used a hot glue gun to adhere them to the twine.  I also put little dabs on the back of the letter at the beginning and end of the twine to reinforce the hold. 

Here is a close up of the finished project.  I used a wreath holder which I had handy since Christmas was over and I was putting the decorations away.

Fast forward 5 months.

Basically the first nice day, I whipped open that gallon of paint and went at it!   I decided to use a foam paint brush so that there wouldn't be any streaks or brush strokes.   It took about 4 coats to get the color just right.   Here is the finished paint job:

After 5 months of waiting, I had the door fully complete. It turned out better than I expected and gives the front of the house a pop of color without being obnoxious.

 And ...I have an almost full gallon of paint.  Oops.