Tackling the Storm Door Situation

First, a huge shout out and thank you to Kate, aka Centsational Girl, for linking my foyer on her FB page. I've had more comments and views today than ever before. Thanks for all the kind words!

Now, on to the post. Have you noticed that I'm a little obsessed with fixing up the front of my house? I've tackled the front door and the front stoop so far. And since we had a gorgeous day after Hurricane Irene blew through, I decided that I needed to be outside working on something. But, I was recovering from a back injury, so I needed something relatively easy. I looked around my house for a little bit, and then it was settled. Watch out storm door hardware - the Spray Paint Fairy is on the prowl.

If I could, I'd like to direct your attention to the tired, sad, very brassy door handle on the storm door. You know, the one that doesn't match any of the other fixtures? Like this one, by the front door:

Or this one, by the front walk:

Or these little guys on the garage:

And certainly not the pristine black door knocker, shutters, planters or welcome mat. Suffice it to say that this handle wasn't exactly doing it for me.  So, off it came. 

Unfortunately - my camera ate all my pictures of the spray painting process. Every last one of them. I tried to recreate them, but it's really not the same. My apologies in advance. 

Anyway, I got that bad boy off with a screwdriver and some good old fashion brute strength. Then, I wiped all of the pieces down with some liquid deglosser (instead of sanding). 

I laid them out on some plastic on the driveway, using shovels and bags of mulch to hold it all down in the wind. Then, I set to work spraying them with this stuff:

After they were mostly dry, I gave them a quick shot of this stuff to seal them up real nice. 

It started getting really windy, despite my many garage items holding down the plastic, so I actually brought a few pieces inside for the finishing touches. 

Looking mighty fine in that oil-rubbed bronze coat. Once they were good and dry, back to the storm door they went. Since I didn't get any before pics due to camera malfunction, I snapped this shot of the door without any hardware. 

And finally - I got all the pieces back on there with only minor scratch damage. 

A few touch ups, and a little bit of wipe-on poly, and it's good to go!

 
The storm door covers the old, icky-looking door knob from sight, so this little change buys us some additional time before we decide what to do on that front. All in all, it's definitely a small change, but I'm really loving the way it looks. (And if you look inside the door, you'll see that Chester is a fan as well. That's gotta count for something.)