FINALLY!!! After weeks of trying to change the color of our shutters, we have achieved our goal and are officially over the shutter bug! The weather was amazing! We spent all Sunday afternoon outside working on transforming the front of the house. Here’s one last look at it before. And now here’s a look at the finished result!Ta da! So much better, right? I really love the new awnings. The old ones were a very faded navy. That combined with the cranberry colored door, yellow house and black shutters was just way too many colors going on. This brings a nice cohesive look. (Raise your hand if you’re singing “How much is that doggy in the window?”)See the contrast between the grey from the last painting and this new one? I love the lighter color. It’s Stormy Monday by Benjamin Moore.

While I was painting the shutters, Jamie was stripping the paint off the front door. I am so glad to be rid of that awful color! Jamie stripped the door with this nifty stuff.

The paint stripper worked pretty well. You paint it on with a plastic brush and let it sit for about 15 minutes. It starts to bubble up the paint, then you just scrape it off. Some spots required more than one coat. Some spots, like in the nooks, didn’t work well with it because of all the grooves. For those areas, we sanded by hand with little wire brushes and sandpaper. Once all the paint was off, Jamie filled the cracks and then used the hand sander to buff it all out.

Next up was painting. A storm was rolling in and we were losing light. We’d been at it for 9+ hours at this point. This door took up so.much.time. We kept asking ourselves why we didn’t just buy a new one. I kept reminding us that we were saving at least $200, probably more like $300 and keeping (what we presume) the original door and hardware. We did one coat of the regular Stormy Monday we used on the shutters then did two more coats of it in a semi gloss.

11 LONG hours after we started, we put the door back up. We are very pleased with the end results. So pleased that we repeatedly high-fived. I need to take a picture in the daylight, but here’s the last (super grainy) pic I snapped that night. It looks so cozy!

Next up is getting a new screen door and painting the shutters on the rest of the house — all 12 of them!!

UPDATE: A clearer version of the after look.