The Front Door

The front door is the 'eye' of the house - it is the first point of contact for visitors and needs to look clean and welcoming.


 

BEFORE

The front door was badly weathered and we had taken it down, sanded it and used Coopers Restoration on it to get it to its' former glory (well just about).  However, we had never got around to painting the door frame - which acts like a kohl eye liner  painted black needed a good sand down and paint and the front step was chipped as you can see from the photo. 

So Elise and Louis from France sanded the frame down and painted it with:


Resene High Gloss
Soft Black

Painting of the house

15 January 2015
What a massive job - three weeks of preparation time - and this is just the bottom storey!  Glen worked on repairing damage to the right-of-way side of the house and clothes-line side of the house.  There were lots of repairs done in the past but they were done so it was very obvious.  We have used three 2 litre tins of ADOS Builders Fill which can be cut,sawn, drilled, chiselled, nailed, sanded, painted and screwed into.  It has repaired cracks, holes, and wood which has been attacked by borer (which are all gone - just the tiny holes of their trails left!)  Fabulous stuff that ends up being stronger than wood!


PAINT
The first level walls have been painted with:
Resene - Blanc
Lumbersider - Low Sheen Blanc


The verandah bannisters have been painted with:
Resene - Blanc
Sonyx - Semi-gloss


The black trim:
Annette's Soft Black (made by Resene Onehunga)

I like how the gloss of the window trim and bannisters constrast with the low sheen of the walls.  The low sheen also avoids highlighting imperfections which are obviously unavoidable in a 158 year old house!


19 January 2014
The front wall below the verandah has been prepared for painting.  There are five layers of various paint colours used over the years and we decided not to sand back to bare wood.  Therefore we have  repaired any cracks and dry rot with builders bog.



Previously someone had 'repaired' a crack in a board with a piece of crinkly metal (bottom right of the window) and painted over it - it wouldn't have been so bad if the piece of metal was flat - it looked really bad. Wish I had taken a photo of it... Glen pulled the metal off to reveal that someone in the past had probably kicked the plank in. We builders-bogged it to make it smooth and it looks 100% better and will also be stronger.

Glen then gave the whole wall an undercoat of white paint.  He could see the defects better and skimmed with builders bog where needed, and sanded to gain as flat a surface as possible.

The next drama is to get the top coat paint colour right....a reminder that it is important to record the names of the colours used so that they can be remembered.  We have a colour Glen's Vanilla Cream - which sounds right - but is too dark and looks dirty - so back to the drawing board....

Yay - found the perfect colour - Resene  Blanc.  Looks crisp, clean and warm - and contrasts nicely with the black trim.