One score and one year ago I wrote a little entry called Curtainless Showers and Other Keepin-It-Real Tales of Moving Woe.
Fast forward to today, and that woe is still hanging around here in full force.
We’re trying to do everything we can to make our house look better and stand out from the other four or five hundred houses for sale in our area. One of the suggestions from our Realtor was to make our front entrance as welcoming and as Wow!ing as possible.
So this weekend I set to work making my old weathered front door shine again.
After five years of ugly Alabama weather our front door was looking pretty shabby. The bottom half was gray and ashy from all the grime and fading, thirsty wood. The door was dying for some moisture which I have failed at providing until today. Sorry, door.
I should have taken better care of you over the years. I didn’t really know that wood needs a little lotion every now and then just like my legs in the winter time.
Unfortunately I don’t have any “before” photos (too lazy to go get the camera!) but here are the “afters”.
Look at the shine! Love it!
Now here’s how I did it.
See all this stuff? Those are my secret weapons. Steel wool. Paper towels. Howard’s Wood Products.
I bought the wood restoring products at a little antique store here in town. I intended to use them on my dining room chairs, but never got around to it. When I cleaned out my laundry room I found them again and decided to use them on my door instead. See? All that hoarding does pay off.
First I scrubbed the entire door really lightly with a damp steel wool soap pad and Howard’s Restor-a-Shine burnishing cream.
Next I used a damp paper towels to wipe it all down and get the surface grime off.
Then I applied Howard’s Resto-a-finish in Mahogany using a dry paper towel.
Then I went back over the entire door again with Howard’s Feed-n-Wax. It has orange oil and carnuba wax, so it really helped to make the wood gleam.
And that’s it! How simple was that?
As you know one thing snowballs into another on a project like this, so I enlisted my 6’2″ husband to come out and clean the windows to remove all the cobwebs and gook.
We may not be having a mad rush of scheduled house showings, but at least I can say that my entrance is welcoming for the next person who decides to take a peep.
May God bless their little house buying hearts.
Come on house… SELL!!!
Awesome! I will have to keep this stuff in mind for future reference.
Now come on, somebody snatch up that gorgeous house!
Beautiful! If you get a buyer, ask them if they have a cousin in Atlanta that needs to buy a house ;o) Good luck!
It looks absolutely wonderful! Our door is painted red, but my mom could seriously use this treatment on her wood door. Great job!
This is great! I need to do something with my front door too. I might just try this. Thanks for sharing and good luck selling your house:-)
Thanks for the tips! It looks very nice.
Wow. Looks great. Wish we were moving there… 🙂
Great idea!! Thanks for sharing!
You can see my DIY project here…http://bethouaknight.blogspot.com/2010/01/liannas-labels-debut-and-giveaway.html
[…] Do they make a mahogany veneer I can just slap up there? Cause that’d be excellent. I truly miss my old front door. […]
Thanks for your post which is truly informative for us and we will surely keep visiting this website.
did you do this process on both the interior and exterior?
I used the Howard Restor-A-Finish (Dark Walnut) and Feed-N-Wax products and had similar great results for my double front access door. I already had another product (Old English) so compared side-by-side on one of the doors and thought both these products combined looked better on my door. I will not use other products anymore on my front door.
Great job! Sure beats sanding, dusting off, wiping with a tack rag, and breathing in nasty fumes applying new stain and or polyurethane. I just cleaned some doors that are still in great shape but the cleaning products left them hazy. I am going to try the products you used with fingers crossed.
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