Front Door Make-Over...Same Door, New Glass!

NOTE: Sorry I have been away for several days. My Grandma passed away so we traveled the seven hours to Kansas for her funeral. She lived a long life and was 93 years old.

Welcome, come in! 

We all want a beautiful front door for the perfect first impression. Did you know that you don't have to buy a brand new door to make it beautiful? If your existing door is in good condition, all you need is a new look and you can get that with decorative glass, a bit of paint and new hardware.

When we moved into our home, this is what our door looked like...

Yes, the stray cat even came with the house. This door was a basic steel door with plain glass sidelights. At first to dress the space, I decided to paint a rug (runner) hoping to distract our company from our Plain Jane door.

We lived with this for a while until I got the bright idea to paint the inside of the front door BLACK!  It sure looked good but man it was dark in our foyer.

Finally, I hated the fact that anyone coming to our front door could look right in the plain glass sidelights. Talk about no privacy!

While shopping for a new front door and getting sticker shock, the salesman said, "We can cut a hole in your existing door and put in any glass you want." WHAT! No kidding!

Then I found out that all decorative glass is rated for privacy. Mine is on the higher end of privacy, I can see out through the tiny pieces of clear glass but the people on the outside can't see anything but maybe a shadow if I get close to the glass! Isn't that great.  Also the lead in the glass is called 'caming' and you can get that in many finishes. So if brass is your thing, then you can get it. In my case, I got antique pewter since I was changing out all the dated gold/brass hardware in the whole house.

The guys came out, took the door off, put it on sawhorses, cut the hole, put in the glass and then took out the plain glass in the sidelights and put in matching decorative glass. All in only a couple of hours! I painted the outside door my Sherwin Williams, Ramie color that matches the upper story siding color. And I painted our house numbers on after seeing this idea on the wonderful creative blogs out there in blogland.

I purchased new hardware on eBay at a much cheaper cost than any of our big box hardware stores. I also had a company come out that puts on a product over the cement that can be cut any way, so I selected a stone motif to go with our stone corners on our house and our porch floor looks great all over. I must admit, I do miss the 'painted rug'. People would try to walk around that rug so not to get it dirty.  I would constantly say..."It's painted, no worry's"!

I realize that this solution was still not cheap. It cost me around $700, (I used the Glass Doctor) but it would have doubled if I would have bought a whole new door.  And the light just streams into our foyer, so my black color inside works too.

I hope this was helpful to someone out there that did not know that they could save their front door and still make it beautiful.

NOTE: You should be able to click on most of the pictures to enlarge to see further details.
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