Yikes!!!!

Time to call an exterminator!

LOL!

That looks AWESOME! Great job. :)

Oh arachnophobia! What a great porch! A friend of mine put the little tiny plastic spiders all over her sheers on her front window - I think Martha did it - it looked very cute.

How cute - but it gives me the willies. I HATE spiders!

Are you thinking of using the original door now?

You have baby spiders ... you need to get one of those big fuzzy Mama spiders!!

You know what the most disconcerting part is? See all the abandoned bikes and scooters? We haven't seen the girls or the neighbors kids in a while, think we should be worried? :o ;)

Thanks guys .. we had our kids and all the neighborhood kids here helping, they had a blast decorating.

Cattknapp, that sounds so cute, I'll have to file that idea!

Les, I hate spiders too! I was thinking as I was climbing up and down the ladder for the 500th time 'spinning' the web and my thighs were on fire .. a mother's love for her children *is* strong! *LOL* We still have 7 big pumpkins to carve and the girls are try to talk me and their dad into driving a stake so we can stack them up like a totem.

I had my DH pull the original door out so I could see what a stained door would look like on the front. It really looks so much better. If I could find a way to reuse the original door I would in a heart beat since it matches all the interior doors to the house. The problem is that the previous owner nailed this metal piece on the front of the door that was intended as weather stripping type of thing, it locked into another piece as the door closed. Well it never sealed properly and now if we removed that piece the front of the door would be full of nail holes. Here's a close up, I'm not sure if you can see what I'm talking about around the perimeter of the door. My Dh and I are still brain storming trying to figure out a way to salvage the door, I'm not sure if it's possible though. If we could get the door to work, as far as balance I think if we put the door back in, built a large header and removed the shutters completely, it might solve some of the proportion issues.

{{!gwi}}

NIce work by the previous owners, huh?

I know nothing about woodworking. But if you were to strip down the door after removing the metal strip, fill all the holes with wood filler, and then re-stain, would the nail holes still be really visible once the door was closed? Or, if the nail holes sit in a bit on the door, could you add a thin piece of some kind of moulding all around the door to hide the nailholes, stained to match of course. Or would that be too odd?

I could see that door with some wonderful beveled and textured glass in it, the large header. MIght be cool to move the house numbers (in brass or whatever your hardware is on the door) to sit on the large header, which would further draw your eyes to the doorway.

Honestly, tho, I am not sure about losing the shutters - you might end up with a lot of blank wall space up there. What about painting the shutters white? It would make them kind of meld with the porch, but still keep you from having a lot of blank wall on either side of the door. I am also thinking that the style of the shutters is wrong - they should be louvered, not paneled.

Zipdee : I LOVE YOUR HOME !! I don't see the nail holes...can't you just fill and sand and stain them. We have this original front door on our 1890 home but we had to take out another one and this is what we did with it, the bottom 1/3 is waiting for me to think of a way to use it :

placed it in the stairwell wall for light :

{{!gwi}}

original door interior and exterior view still in use :

{{!gwi}}

{{!gwi}}

That looks great! What an amazing house, and I love it in yellow & red :)

It's a spider blessed event!!!

Excellent job by the spiders!!!

Wonderful Halloween House (and very very pretty too!)

Well Done!

Actually looks like Oregon in the fall :) (I've never seen such spiderwebs as I have here. Literally they can be that big (not white, though :)). It's awe-inspiring and has given me a whole different attitude toward them)

LOVE the abandoned bicycles, though LOL

Zipdee, that's a gorgeous old door! Hope you can figure out a way to make it work. I think the shutters look good on your house. The ones you have are just too long.

I would also just fill the holes and use the old door. It will give your facade so much character. And you'd have to get up really close to see the holes if you do a good job filling them. Nobody would expect perfection anyway with a gorgeous old door like that. It's part of its charm.

Groovy decorating BTW.

Our previous house was Spider Hell, but it was real spiders - ew! Love the little rocking chair on the porch. Our neighbors have all decorated like MAD for Halloween, I almost dread what the Christmas displays are going to be like... ;-)

Ditto on filling the nail holes (talk to the folks on the Woodworking forum about what the best filler is, and you may be able to use one of those stain markers to "color them in") and using the original door, but a Big Fat NO (sorry Les) on changing out the glass if that's the original wavy glass. We have a very similar door on our ca. 1900 house and the glass actually adds a surprising amount visually.

Trailrunner, your home is just beautiful! I love your doors and the glass. That is such and awesome reuse of the door you had to remove, it looks great as a window!

As far as filling the holes in the our door, I'm honestly not sure. I guess the only to find out would be to try .. nothing ventured, nothing gained :)

There are a few things giving us pause. The first is they really got crazy with the nails, they are very evenly spaces about every 1/2 and inch. I tried to take a close up picture to show you all below. So I think even with filling the nail holes and trying to stain them to match, I think you'd see a pattern along the perimeter of the door because of how the nail holes are spaced. The second thing is I'm not sure the door is even stained. Heart pine really, really darkens as it ages. To me, it looks like the original finish on the door and it's the same color as the other doors, floors and mantles in the house. So until the door was stripped it would be hard to tell if we could use stain with out making is a lot darker than all of the other wood work.

{{!gwi}}