Multiple choice question: Did I recently paint our back door because a) it was falling apart and ugly AF, b) I was supposed to be working on something else but I was procrastinating that so I painted the back door instead, c) I wanted a pretty backdrop for a Christmas wreath, or d) all of the above? Of course my most recent DIY project was due to all of the above and now look how pretty Christmas is!!

If you follow me on Instagram, then you may have seen in my stories the process of tearing apart the wood veneer and painting. If you don’t follow me on Instagram then….why not?!

Here is a “before” photo:

Obviously the door was ugly. The wood veneer had been changing colors and peeling off over the past three years and recently had swelled up in a recent bad rainstorm. So I’d had it and I knew that I was going to put a pretty wreath on it and didn’t want the wreath backdrop to be so yuck. One November afternoon, while procrastinating doing something else, I peeled off as much of the wood veneer as I could (only got one splinter!) and sanded down the part of the door where I couldn’t get the wood veneer off as well as the rest to smooth out the material.

I went to Home Depot and picked up a pint of exterior paint in a flat finish in Behr’s Indigo Ink. I knew I wanted dark blue and just guessed that this color would work. (Hint: it did.)

I painted two coats of Indigo Ink using the brush I used when I painted the side of the garage over the summer.

I knew I wanted a second color for this door and the beautiful color combo on this paint brush confirmed what I was going to do next.

A few days later, I taped up the door to create a grid pattern and then a diagonal pattern on top of that. I only wanted to paint some of these to make it seem like more of a haphazard pattern of triangles but I ended up painting more than I should have. Oh well.

If you remember, when I painted the garage, I combined two colors. I grabbed the leftovers of one of those colors, Behr’s Tropical Trail, and did two coats of it in all of the triangles I had marked.

And that was it. Super easy and SOOOOOO much better than the previous situation. This is all just a temporary fix. I’ve written before about how we will eventually renovate the mudroom and will replace this door. This DIY job was just so I didn’t have to look at some of the house’s ugliness much longer and this door makes me so happy.

I mean, really, just look at it!

As you can see, we really like a bright and colorful backdrop to our Christmas decorations here! Here are a few more bits of Christmas at our house:

Happy holidays from the cozy cottage!