Charcoal Painted Exterior Door Love

I'm back! And I tackled a project! And it only took me seven days to paint a door! It's a world record!

:)

In my last post I asked for your help to decide whether I should paint our new exterior side door white or charcoal. Many of you weighed in (thanks so much!) and I'm pretty sure every single comment and email suggested....

.... charcoal! 

And you were right. The charcoal looks great. (Well, except for the bubbles and discolouration that comes along with painting an exterior door in 7 degree Celsius temperatures during a lightning storm.)(Nothing that an extra coat of paint in the spring can't fix.)(The perfectionist in me is cringing right now.)(Moving on.)

Before I share the after picture, let's take a look at how our side entry looked a few years back. 

Yup, pretty awful. After some sanding, primer, paint, and elbow grease it started to look a little bit better. 

It was a challenge to find a light fixture that would still leave enough clearance for the storm door to open. We ended up choosing a fixture from a local lighting store that was on clearance. Alex was probably the happiest I've ever seen him. Heh heh. Apparently he did not like my other Pottery Barn option. ;)

Recently, Alex surprised me by removing the old, metal storm door and old, exterior door with a new one from Home Depot (Craftsman 6 Lite Primed Smooth Fiberglass Front Door). In the next picture you can see some progress. We still needed to install and paint some new brick mold around the door. We also hadn't purchased new door hardware yet.

This past week I made it my life's mission to get the door painted before the cold weather settles in for good. I froze my little tushie off and had to work in 30 minute intervals when the baby was sleeping and Coops was playing. He did come over to inspect my progress one day and left a nice little hand print in the wet paint. 

At first I left the window frame white like we did on the Fixer Upper doors. After going back and forth looking at the door and some inspiration pictures I decided to go back and paint the frame charcoal as well.

Charcoal door with white window frame: 

A few inspiration pictures with the doors all charcoal:

Without further ado, here is how our side entry door looks now! We're making progress, people.

{There is a significant gap between the door and the window frame which didn't take paint very well. I'm going to ask the hubs to add a little bit of paint-able caulking around the frame so that I can paint it as well and thus have a cleaner look around the window. The door was on the cheaper side so I'm not too worried about it.}

Here is a side by side comparison of how our side entry looked before and how it's looking with a little bit of progress. 

I've been shopping around town looking for a few decorative items to amp up the curb appeal. I'm on the hunt for a doormat, some house numbers, a fall mum, a simple wreath, and a cute mailbox. I will most definitely share when I find some of my wishlist items!

P.S. Some days I longingly wish for a home that looks like this:

But then I come to my senses and realize that a) I would be one broke girl, and b) I would have no silly little projects to blog about!

:)

Oops, I almost forgot. The new door colour is called Iron Mountain by Benjamin Moore!