Back of the House: From Crappy to Pretty Cool
Until this summer, 2023, my house was one of the crappier looking houses on the block. This year we finished the front porch rehab, got the house painted, and added some real nice trim to the front of the house. From the front, it looked great.
Part of the house painting contract was to patch and paint the concrete foundation visible on the sides and back of the house. When the contractor started prepping the foundation for painting, a large portion crumbled and flaked off. Our contractor said, "Mister Rush, we need to talk." It was one of the project's "HGTV moments."
Even if I ignored the ugly-looking foundation, the rest of the back looked extra crappy next to the newly painted parts of the house. Nothing had been done to the back stairs for at least 7 years, the retaining wall was nasty, and the unpainted wooden basement door looked awful.
My wife and the contractor proposed replacing the door. I was still in shock from the extra cost for the foundation repair so I proposed rehabbing the door instead. My wife was skeptical, but agreed to let me take a shot at it.
Before starting the door rehab, I power washed the stairs and the retaining wall. Then, I stained the stairs and painted the wall.
I am pleased with the results.
"Before" Pictures
"After" Pictures
The Journey From Crappy to Pretty Cool
Gluing, Patching, and Sanding
The door was in pretty bad shape. My wife strongly advocated for replacement, but my wallet was in favor of refurbishment.
I used a glue syringe to put glue under the loose wood. I am not sure whether the proper term is veneer or laminate. For this section, I will stick with the term veneer. I glued all the loose veneer, then I patched and sanded the gouges, dings, and places where the veneer had broken away. I thought I was ready to paint.
That was not the case.
When I applied the primer, there were a non-trivial number of areas where the veneer bubbled up. Crap!
Where practical, I glued the veneer back down. For other areas, I broke out the 80-grit sandpaper and went to town. Eventually, it got smooth enough for a basement entry door and I called it done.
For the first coat of primer, I used KILZ 2. There was a good amount of bleed-through, so I applied a second coat. Still had bleed-through. I switched to KILZ 3. It's a heavier duty primer—two more coats did the trick.
A Little Bit of Trim Makes a Big Difference
To get ideas for this project, I searched "upgrade plain door with trim" on YouTube. There are lots of videos about dressing up plain doors.
At my house, my wife is the designer and I am the doer. I originally picked out trim with square edges. My wife said "That's nice, but dirt will collect on top of that." She was right. So, we went with the rounded trim you see in these pictures.
In the final design, we made the ends of the three vertical pieces of trim pointed. They are reminiscent of the points of Zeus's lightning bolts, and they're not flat, so they don't get as dirty.
Check out the picture on the right of the still-unfinished door with the first half of the planned trim. Even in that raw state, I think it looks way better.
Upgrading the Hardware
Whenever I paint a door, I replace all the hardware. It's a quick, easy, high payoff upgrade.
It's pretty easy to see why I replaced these hinges. Enough said.
We wanted a keyless entry for the back door. It comes in handy for me when I don't have a house key and my wife is not home. We got ours from Home Depot ( Click here for link ) If the link is no longer valid, try searching Home Depot site for "Camelot Satin Nickel Electronic Keypad Deadbolt Door Lock with Accent Door Handle."
The Pièce De Résistance: Zeus
While I was loooking for architectural trim for the front of my house on architecturaldepot.com, I saw a Zeus head. My immediate reaction was "I gotta have that." I asked my wife if she'd be cool with Zeus being on our back door. She was.
Zeus comes from the factory unfinished. Fortunately for me, my son married a woman who is very artistic. I called K and asked her if she'd be OK with painting Zeus next time she visited. Her response, "I'd love to!"
I am an engineer. Sometimes we do post-project reviews where we discuss the "keys to success." We also discuss what went wrong, but that is much less fun. The primary "key to success" for the Zeus portion of the project was my daughter-in-law. Thanks, K.
In Conclusion
I am really happy with how this turned out.
The back of the house looks better. But, like at any house, there is more to do: the patio needs some TLC, the retaining walls need another coat of paint, and the retaining walls are full of soil but the only plant life in them is weeds.
But you know what? It doesn't bother me. The back of the house looks better. My wife said, "I can't believe how nice the door looks." That's a great thing to hear! We will get the other stuff done as time and budget permit.
I told her, "Maybe there's an idea for an HGTV show for the rest of us." We could call it "Gross to Good Enough," or "Crappy to Cool," or "Sucking Less is More."