and here it is from the outside..,the one I ju st finally painted black….oh well, it lasted for a few months;)

So, Ry got to work taking out the old door..

and putting in the new...

We had bought this door a year ago when they were having a sale at Menards. It's just been sitting in the shed since then :) I think it cost us around $150 at the time.

Although I was grateful it would let some light in, I’m not always a huge fan of in-stock metal doors. If there was no budget involved I would love a door like this…

or this...

Drooling!!!

or I suppose I would even take something like this...

but unfortunately those are way out of our budget. So, the stock door it was.

 Then the other day I was blog reading and came across this door on Our Vintage Home Love.

I was smitten. She took her ordinary door and transformed it into a faux wood original. That’s when I knew this is what I was going to try. The only bugger was that she didn’t really give step by step directions. Her directions were..

I would like to be able to tell you the colors I used but I just mixed a bunch of color from my paint stash and then rubbed an antiquing glaze over the entire door. The antiquing glaze I bought at Lowes. I just dabbed and rubbed off until I had the look I wanted. The colors included a leather brown color, a chocolate color and a gold and a little black.

So, with that, I was on a mission. And on my own. I headed to Menards and grabbed sample sizes of colors that I thought were close tot he ones she mentioned. This is what I ended up with..

They are dutch boy paints that I got mixed in the small samples sizes. I think they were about $2 each.

I then searched everywhere for an antique glaze and came up with NOTHING! Menards didn’t have anything, I checked the lowes and home depot website and couldn’t find anything, and then I finally came across this I believe on Amazon.

it was the closest I could come to for an antique glaze. I believe this was about $12?? So I figured if it didn’t work, I wasn’t out too much.

So, now onto the challenge. I was a little nervous to get started but first opened up all of my paints…

I also added in my chalkboard paint for the black, cause that’s all I had. So if you don’t have black you’ll want to get some of that as well.

Then I used the same brush the whole time and started layering on…starting with the lightest brown and some darker browns.

Then I’d add a little bit of the gold for highlightening and dimension…

I would just keep on layering and adding and layering and adding until I covered the whole door and was pleased with the look.

Here’s how she looked when I was done with that step.

It looks a little more terd brown in this pic than it actually was:) But after I got this part done, I added some black around the edges to give it a deeper look and dimension.

I would just put about this much on the outside of the panels or edges of the door and then paint it in to blend well. And here’s what it looked like after that step.

At first I didn’t paint the grid, but after assessing it I realized it made it look a bit cheaper with a white grid, and did the same process on that as well.

Quite honestly, I was pleased with the results with just paint. But at this point my glaze was in the mail so I thought I’d still try to see what that did to the final effect.

When my glaze arrived I brushed it on and wiped it off like a stain. Although it didnt’ do a ton, it did help to blend everything just a bit more. It’s up to you whether you would want to spend the extra $12 on that or not. Here are pictures of the door completed, glaze and all..

Doors are super hard to get good pictures of I have realized, the light is hard to photograph!

and from the sitting room...

I jut like that it pops a little bit.

I actually liked it so much I didn’t it to my front door as well…

this door was always getting so dirty with little fingers that the dark helps a lot!

and a close up...