Front Door Makeover

So my husband and I hate where we live. Not the town (which we love) – the apartment. We’ve hit the renter’s wall. We’re tired of having no creative (or maintenance) control over our home. We REALLY want our OWN. But. I just finished up graduate school and he’s on the brink of doing the same and - surprise, surprise!! – that time in school didn’t really allow for us to save up the big bucks (or any bucks really). So immediately upon renewing our lease we both went from loving our apartment to hating it. Renter’s wall. The apartment is cozy, we have it nicely decorated, but none of that matters. It’s still an apartment in a 12 unit building complete with the sounds of neighboring lives (a highly skilled snorer, ping pong balls bouncing on floors….., and a suspicious frequency of moving furniture).

I had to do something. But it couldn’t cost me much in the form of time or money. So, I decided to tackle the front door situation. There was nothing exciting or inviting about our front door area. In fact I had left it purposely devoid of personality. I never saw a reason to put effort into it because 1) I didn’t want anything stolen, 2) we don’t exactly have space to hang out there, and 3) I liked the anonymity of it. But I needed us to see our apartment as something nice to come home to and wanted a challenge. As you can see in the photo, here’s what I had to work with: 1 super tired doormat, 1 gold-colored wreath hanger from last Christmas (it holds coats on the interior side so we didn’t want to take it down), and 1 super dingy Samsonite chair (free from the vintage shop down the road). In addition to these items, I gathered up the following: 1 can of flat white spray paint ($4), 1 can of flat teal (lagoon) spray paint ($4), 1 can of flat reddish/orangish spray paint ($4), a new plain doormat ($10), 1 bike wheel (free - pulled off a bike someone left next to our dumpster), steel wool (free from a friend), and masking tape (taken from my husband’s lab supplies).

 

Step 1.  That awful chair.  In its present dirty mustard color it was perfectly awful, but I still love the shape of it and the plastic & metal combo.  If there’s one thing I learned from my parents it’s that spray paint can make a world of a difference for very little money!!  I decided to go white to freshen things up  (Photo).  Ran into the dilemma of what to paint the metal (legs) vs. the plastic (seat & chair back).  Now I’m a perfectionist and I usually have to have things exact (ask my husband – that is if he hasn’t lost his sanity yet), but I gave myself both a time and budget constraint on this so I could only implement fast, cheap ideas.  To jazz it up, I went teal on the chair legs (photo), but only the legs.  Normally I would disassemble the chair and make sure all of the metal supports were alike, but this makeover was as much a challenge to my annoying (and time-consuming) perfectionist ways as it was for my creativity. 

 

Step 2.  Door mat.  So I racked my brain for awhile trying to come up with something ridiculously cool and smart to put on the mat – a word or a phrase that reeked of contemporary sophistication and wit.  Too much pressure!  Soon I realized that with the uneven surface of the new mat, I wouldn’t easily be able to get the clean, sharp edges I would want for a word or image.  So…stripes!  I worked with the ridges using 2 pieces of cardboard to make spray paint canyons – getting the paint only on the raised mat edges and creating crisp lines using the two different colors.  As you can seen, I was quite thrilled with the result!  Although I clearly struggled with the self-portrait of my satisfaction…

 Step 3.  Bike wheel.  I salvaged the bike wheel months ago and convinced my husband that I would eventually make something cool out of it.  It’s been rattling around on the back of his truck this whole time!  We needed something to hang on the door but I’m not much of a wreath person – so why not a bike wheel instead?  After all, it has the same shape and we love to ride!  I roughed the surface up with steel wool, knocking off the rust patches and then set to painting it teal.  Kinda fell in love with the pattern left on the cardboard from the hub!

  

Step 4.  Wreath hook.  Couldn’t decide what color to paint it – so I worked with my indecision and painted one side teal and the other side red!  Used a pipe on the exterior of the building to let it dry from.

Steps 5 and 6.  Thus far, none of the items add much pizzazz, but I had plans for pizzazz…I just wanted you to wait and see the results…..

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I created a very imperfect “hello.” stencil from cardboard so that our door area would greet us when we came home.  The rough edge and flimsiness of the cardboard left the words with rather fuzzy edges that make me twitch a bit from their lack of precision, but remember, this is low budget and low time and I wouldn’t allow myself to touch it up or perfect it.  The material woven into the bike wheel is what inspired the color scheme from the start (1/2 yard, $6.50) and it is simply attached using double-sided tape (there is also peel and stick cork on the back of the wheel so it doesn’t make a loud metal banging sound when we close the door.

What do you think?  Cuz I kinda love it.  And all for under $30 and a half day of effort (drying time excluded).  Maybe this year is off to a good start!

UPDATE:  Less than 6 hours after finishing this our new neighbors shoved a large charcoal grill up next to our bikes by our front door.  We’ve gotta get our own place......