A Front Door Refresh With Urbane Bronze Paint

Hey friends! If you have been following along then you know that I am in operation refresh around here. Even though it’s a whole lotta work and I am pretty worn out after a big project, I am always ready to start the next big thing. I just love that ta-da moment of it all coming together.  So far, I have redone my master bedroom. You can check that out here. Next up was my guest bedroom and bath. Last week, I wrapped up painting my main interior. Hallways, dining room, family room and kitchen. You can tell that I think paint is pretty much king when it comes to refreshing a space. Last week I did a little front door refresh with Urbane Bronze paint.

Disclaimer: This post may contain affiliate links for products that I use and love.

We are getting the exterior of our house painted over the next couple of weeks {the weather is dictating our timeline}. We have lived here for almost 14 years and things are starting to look a little-worn down. I am not excited about the price tag that comes with painting our house but I will love the way it looks when it is done, no doubt. With the exterior, we will be replacing the shutters and I painted the front door myself because I just couldn’t handle the shabby black anymore. Several years ago, we painted it a super glossy black. At the time I loved it but then it just started to look beat up. I am totally drawn to greys but with the amount of browns in our home {the whole neighborhood is a beige tone and we have strict HOA’s that keep us in that color scheme.}, I need to keep the browns a bit. My true love is pretty much grey but we have a light maple floor. Grey everywhere else just wouldn’t work.  I’d love to replace it all but that ain’t happening folks. Cause you know, my money tree isn’t producing. So I chose Urban Bronze by Sherwin Williams and I L O V E it! I used the same color on my kitchen table and the goal is to use it on all of the interior doors. Eventually.

Urban Bronze is a pretty popular color over at Sherwin Williams. It’s more of a brownish-grey which is the best of both worlds and an easy way for me to tie what I want with what I already have.

Prep is key in painting projects. I treated the door a bit more like a piece of furniture. We took it completely off the hinges. By ‘we’ I mean my husband did it at my request. Ha! We then set it up on saw horses and I got to sanding. I used our electric sander for the edges and flat area and then I finished it up with a sanding block on the crevices. My goal was to rough it all up a bit so that the new paint would stick and also take some of the imperfections out. The paint I used previously was thick and my plan wasn’t to sand down to the bare door as that would be a lot of paint and I think it would have possibly messed up the door. It would have also caused me to go through a million sanding pads.

This is what we started with:

See the hardwood? Gotta keep the browns around.

The front of our house gets hit pretty hard from the sun. The summers here are hot,hot.hot. Our paint is extra faded on the front of the house and my door mats barely make it through a season. In the winter, it gets blasted pretty well too. So guess what? I buy new doormats often. I’d say it’s a secret but my hubby is on to me at this point. I just get a bit of an eye roll and we move on.

Here are a few pics of the door being sanded:

Please note: My poor little yard is need of some major TLC but we are in that late winter season over here so there is no point in doing much until the weather simmers down. 

So back to the front door. I feel like there are a few shadows and such but overall, I love how this turned out. It’s so pretty + fresh. I loved the black but it kinda ran its course and I was ready to brighten it up again.

I did rehang the door before I painted it as it felt a bit easier and I was also a bit worried about flipping it too soon even if the paint does dry within an hour, I didn’t want to risk any marks on the painted side. The weather was changing fast this day too which meant time was not really on my side.

This is the paint I used. The super cool thing about it is that it dries within an hour. Yaaaaas! That is kinda important when you have your door open to paint it and you don’t want to just leave it open for hours on end.

I used a roller for most of the project but a paintbrush was needed for the crevices. I will link what I used below.

I am stil on the hunt for a pretty rug for my front door and I think things will look even better once the exterior is painted but I wanted to get this post up. Rain + hardwood requires a rug of some sort. Right?

We did this reclaimed wall as a feature wall in our entryway and I absolutely love it. It has a coat rack and fun shelf to add decor to. I just picked up this awesome magnolia wreath at Hobby Lobby with my 40% off coupon so it was around $35. I love how full it is.

I found this adorable mat at a local store called Terra Cottage. How many of you can relate to at least one thing on this mat? #handsup I picked up the lavender at Green Acres and the cute succulent came from Bushnell Gardens.  It’s so fun to personalize your front door. It is, after all, the first thing people see when they walk up to your home.

Heads up regarding Snap Dry: I have to say, overall I was happy with this product. My door does look a bit streaky in spots but that could also be because of the sanding as well as how thick that last paint job I did was.  It doesn’t seem to be getting favorable reviews and the Pro Classic is getting more thumbs up. I might try that on another interior door and see what the results are for a true comparison. It’s not bothering me enough to repaint it. Honestly, we get so many shadows on our front door so I am not really phased by a little variation.

Supplies used:

• Sherwin Williams Snap Dry paint in Urbane Bronze
• angled paint brush
• foam rollers
• small paint tray
• painters tape {to tape off the hinges when the door was hanging}
• orbit sander
• sanding blocks

So yeah, I will say it over and over, paint is a game changer my friends! For me its a bit cathartic to see a project wrap up and transform a space into something brighter. A good refresh can seriously make my day. I know, I am a total home decor/design geek but I will take that as a compliment thank you very much!

I hope you have a beautiful week! We have more rain headed our way tomorrow but we’ve had a couple of days of sunshine which has been a lovely thing. The sunshine really does wonders for my ‘tude if you catch my drift.