Amity: thanks for the work to post info on faux painting! I really appreciate your comments--and those of the others with faux finish experience. I had hoped to give it a try on the basement stairwall today, but no can do. This is a "distracted day" and a "bad eyes" day* so I'm not up to the task of reading posts carefully let alone working on tiny details, but maybe by Sunday I can really concentrate on the directions for the technique and follow the links thoughtfully? Meanwhile, I'm gonna prime the metal doors in anticipation of a tan base coat, which will eliminate the "moby dicks" in the room until a final solution is chosen. Worldmom: Your situation indeed sounds much like ours. Your carpenter has a good idea and if he knows what he's doing, this is a great solution. Is your oak-faced metal door with chalkboard ready to photograph? Even if it's not mounted in room? Am eager to see edge details close up. (I had threatened to use chalkboard paint on metal door in earlier plan for the room, but the lobby has become more formal and there will be some large framed art pieces on walls also so don't want door to rival them. Have considered a mirror in the center panel, surrounded by oak frame like you're doing.) ____ Should anyone care why we're having a hard time deciding on doors, continue reading. We've got a pair of oak two-panel doors for the lobby closet bypass doors and will add a single matching oak two-panel on the top of basement stair in pocket door. These are Jeld-Wen from HD. DH feels that these compliment the "shaker" style of cabs and he just likes them. He bought them months ago so they're a given. There are actually two metal doors in lobby. The one to garage is solid, no trim, and that's the one seen from adjacent spaces including kitchen. The other leads out to front step and has built-in full-length glass with embedded blind and that can be see from dining room and deck. So, that means I've got a one-pane and a two-pane contradiction in the room already. There are 3 more doors to be purchased: two that lead to the dining room--one from kitchen and one from lobby--and one on new kitchen closet. We've anguished over the choice for the kitchen closet especially because for a while we couldn't find a louvered oak door that was affordable and that fit the pattern of the other doors. But...there's another wrinkle as well. In the dining room, we have one of the old Atrium doors (like French door but with one fixed and one swinging door) to deck. That's a pair of full-length glass doors. This style is more like the front door, if you're keeping score here. We've decided that the two doors into the dining room have to match that style, so unlike the two-panel ones nearby, we'll have two full-length matte glass doors on the routes to dining room, one a pocket door and one a hinged one. Plus, we've finally found a manufacturer that carries oak louvered doors in two-panel and one-panel styles, so we're dithering about whether to spend the money for them instead of the cheaper "hemlock" one in the Jeld-Wen catalog. The company with the new choices in oak louvered doors is Stallion doors. Louvers, matte glass, oak. Haven't finished comparison pricing all these doors, but the cost is steep. We couldn't possibly have afforded an oak firedoor as well. We're throwing out a plain oak hollow core pre-hung that's left over from old kitchen because it won't match anything else, so we're eating the cost of redundancy also. And, as I said, we donated the old oak firedoor before we knew we could have reused it. AARGH! [*Yes, I do have bad eyes days. Has to do with muscles of eye and close focus and prisms. I have 4 pairs of glasses and switch among them looking for a good match, but some days, sigh, nothing works. Distracted days are another matter. Nothing to do with physiology.]

Well my husband has no patience and I haven't made it to the shop... so the paint I had already selected was applied to the trim SW Extra White. The paint is wet and shiny at the moment and the window is covered in plastic, so the color is not true yet. The picture is of the garage door, which is steel, but the color of the door was a match between this door and the front door, which are very similar in color. Also I will need to tell them to complete the frame in white. The second picture of the trim in the dining room which has a little more light coming through. My question is regarding the front door (3rd picture). At first I was going to paint the trim on this one, but a couple of weeks ago changed to staining the door and letting the base trim remain white but stop at the door. So the question: If I stain the trim what do I do with the window above. It is currently primed - purchased that way. Paint it the stain color or paint it white? I welcome your comments. FRONT DOOR BELOW: The door to the left is an office which will match the front door (trim color). These two doors are not in view of any of the other doors. The office has dark stained wood halfway up the wall and the door is see through.

I am going to disagree with the door color. It is true that your current storm door blocks your front door color and makes that entry appear very much like a utility door rather than a front door entry. I would do one of two things: either remove the storm door entirely so you can see a newly painted front door or replace the current storm door with a storm door that allows you to see the entire front door. There are all kinds of accent colors that would work for the front door, but I would stay away from that dusty teal color. Go for a warm accent color. Try red. Or even a navy/dark blue. I agree entirely with the landscaping suggestions. Right now you are blocking the front and not in a good way. Give your landscaping some life. If you go with the red, see if you can have a couple of potted flowers with red in front of the line of bushes to the right of the front door to liven up the entry. If you can't get red for some reason, try a flower/plant that has some color.

so many ways go w/this post-war ranch home. Landscaping will be 75% of the overall look, so take the time and budget to do something with it. try something like this landscaping idea. the colors are nice too. notice the diff doors ways to break up all that grass I'd paint, remove those dated shutters, possibly get a more MCM front door, and do a diff garage door. break up all that grass w/a walkway. spruce up the small front steps. maybe enlarge it a bit. bring in better flowerbed plants. What style do you like? mcm? modern? cottage? I'd love to see a dark color w/the wood accents. doesn't have to be shutters. you could do some slat wood or wood siding somewhere here's a charcoal stucco w/black trim and some wood siding. a more modern garage door. notice the curved walkway and nice landscaping. I used Swiss Coffee (Behr) and Wrought Iron on my own home. you could do these two w/drizzle for the door cheating heart on the body, white trim, silver on the fascia =