J Cooper Photography

We have lived in this house for 4 1/2 years and slowly over that time….we have made it our own.  It was a “blank canvas” when we moved in.  Lightly decorated with neutral paint (except all the bathrooms which all wore hideous wallpaper) and plenty of space.  I immediately loved how fresh and airy the house felt.  The light in our house is amazing and is one of my favorite things about our home.  But there were a a “few” things we hated from the get go.  The biggest was the explosion of BRASS throughout the house.  Now I LOVE an old home.  And I can deal with some measure of out dated-ness.  But BRASS?  Um…1989 called and they want their shine back.

First we stripped off the Hollywood light fixutres and solid brass dome lights.  Then we changed out the kitchen hardware.  When we re-did the master bathroom we had a MAJOR brass Exodus which was extremely liberating.

And only ONE thing remained.  A house FULL of brass doorknobs.  Now I would probably never notice the doorknobs in your house.  If I’ve been over for dinner don’t question me…I’m sure I won’t remember.  But in my own home they were taunting me.  I swear they could talk in their ugly, shiny voices…”look at me…I’m so solid gold…I dare you to price out replacing me!”  And finally I had had enough.  So on this weekend meant for relaxing at the lake or picnicking at the park….we loaded up the van with all four kids in tow and crashed Home Depot.  We spent 3 days chasing that ugly brass right out of our house.

Take that 1989.

We waivered between satin nickel and oil rubbed bronze.  But in the end the bronze won out as we just couldn’t imagine NOT tying it in with the front of our house (now that we have a whole new look!)  We have a mix of bronze and nickel throughout….nickel knobs and pulls in the kitchen, stainless appliances, and nickel faucets….but plenty of bronze too in our lighting fixtures.  So we’re hoping that Stacy and Clinton’s rules about “mixing metals” carry over to our house

We originally tried spray painting our front door hardware.  People are doing it all over Blogland.  In fact we read and CLOSELY followed John and Sherry’s advice on their blog about how to get a great finish.  Their end product seems to be holding up nicely…but in reality it just didn’t stick for us.  Maybe it’s the addition of 4 sets of grubby little hands.  But after about 10 days of handling we were beginning to see signs of slight chipping.  So we abandoned plans to remove our old brass hardware throughout the house to paint…and just went with NEW.  It was more costly (obviously) but in the end I think it will hold up better.  Our house takes some serious abuse

{Wow…I really need to clean my door…amazing what you see in a picture!}

I’m still looking for the best time of day to give you an accurate shot of the front door without the glare.  In a perfect world I would have ditched the screen door.  But it is really convenient for letting light into the front of the house and we love to leave the front door open when expecting company…so it has to stay.

Kind of ironic I guess that I traded out all that solid gold for a giant gold front door.  Hmmm…

And the cooler weather today had me in the mood to bust out the fall decor.  I didn’t get farther than the front door…but it was a good start

I’ve been pinning ideas for my planters for the cooler weather.  Do you waste insane amounts of time on Pinterest like I do?  Feel free to follow my boards and join in on the craziness if you do!

I’ve had a few questions regarding the COLOR OF THE FRONT DOOR.

It is LA805 Cowslip 5 from Laura Ashley’s Valspar line from Lowe’s.  Except I had it color matched at Sherwin Williams because I am a SW self professed snob.  The color looks quite a bit different on my door than it does on my sample but I still LOVE it so I’m not gonna complain.  I DID prime the door as I was covering over a dark brick red and didn’t want anything to bleed through.  I primed with KILZ basic primer and then added 2 coats of paint.  There are lots of good tutorials out there on painting doors…but basically frame out each panel and then lay out the cross pieces staying with the grain (or faux grain for us!) and you will be fine!

So it was a LABOR FULL weekend.  But I am thrilled to say HASTA LA VISTA BABY boxes of brass!