Saturday I took on the task of painting our shutters on the front of our house and our front door...I was not prepared for how time consuming it would actually be!  When we bought our house a year and a half ago it was literally painted all one color...the shutters included.  There was no pop and it looked a little dingy to be honest but that's life with cedar siding.  Our front door needed TLC too from moving in to my husband having the scoot our refrigerator and stove it was in bad need of a paint job.

I decided that since we had the blue on the siding painting the shutters white might be a good option so I got to work on that first.  They were easy enough to take down, only 6 screws hold them up so my hubby helped me with that part.  Once I had them on the sawhorses I took a broom and swept them to get any remaining dirt.  I didn't want to get them wet or I would have had to wait for them to dry.  I started off by doing the edges and the interior of the shutters with a brush.  Once I had that done I was able to take a roller and just roll the paint on.  Doing all four shutters took me about two hours, maybe three. 
Once I had them all painting I laid them in my husbands truck bed to dry which we left them dry for about six hours.  Then putting them back was as easy as getting them off, six screws and they were back on the house.  To be honest, I like the white a lot but I could live without the shutters too...when we bought the house they left the paint for the house so maybe in the spring I'll take them off, power wash the house and just paint the non-painted area but for now at least it looks better than shutters the same color as the house.

Next up was the front door...as you can see below it's seen better days.  From moving into our house, juggling to open the front door with two kids in my arms to moving in a refrigerator and stove that were WAY too big for the door it needed some paint and TLC.  I went with the muted yellow "Melted Butter" by Behr Paints because I wanted a pop of color again the blue grey plus I thought it would be more inviting than a plan old white door.

The door wasn't hard to paint at all just waiting for it to try was the hardest part before I could close it...we definitely have a couple flies in our house today because of it.  I did learn a nifty trick that nail polish remover on a q-tip can take the paint off your hardware...I opted to leave our door knob and dead bolt on out of sheer laziness!

As you can see the door is now bright and fresh and it does really pop!  The shutters look good too but like I said I might just take them off eventually.  All in all I think it was a great project and I was really proud that I did it all myself with the most minimal help from my husband (he was pretty proud too!).  My mom is coming by Sunday so it will be interesting to see what someone who isn't me or my husband thinks but I give myself a big pat on the back for a job well done!