For a while now, Evelin has—on and off—mentioned wanting to do something with the front door. Ideally, we'd have one that let in a little more light, but she also has talked about painting it. Fast forward to this past weekend when Celeste and I went to a hardware store.
The intention was to just find some 2-inch machine screws that would fit the Ross door knocker (more on that shortly) that I brought home from a visit to my parents. The old eagle knocker that came with the house aways partially blocked the peep hole and was nothing particularly special, but it used smaller screws than this one needed.
While I went looking for screws, Celeste was on the phone with Evelin looking at paint chips. They ended up picking Pratt & Lambert PL320 "Tyrian Purple," which closely matched the color of the sweater Celeste was wearing. We had can of Valsapar semi-gloss cabinet door and trim deep base (82003) tinted with that shade and suddenly a project was born.
After taking the door off the hinges and then removing all the hardware, we set it up on the porch and primed it. I also plugged one of the holes from the old door knocker and drilled a new one to fit the Ross one.
Since we started late in the day (and it was getting cold after the sun went down), that was all we achieved the first day and the door went back up for the night.
The next day the door came off the hinges again and Celeste put two coats of Tyrian Purple on it, all the hardware was reattached, and it went back up. There are few places where some touch-ups are needed (it was still a little tacky when we hung it up—it was getting cold again), but overall it looks pretty good. We probably need to consider if we want/need to paint the door frame (either purple or at least touch up the white), but that can wait until later.
(It was also noted that the tone of the different bits of hardware—mail slot, knocker, dead blot, and handle—are different hues that noticeably don't work well with each other, something that didn't jump out as strongly when the door was a dirty white. We may be replacing those in the nearish future too...)
The Ross door knocker originally came from the Pontchartrain Hotel on Saint Charles Avenue in New Orleans. My father's grandfather had an apartment there and after he and my father's grandmother divorced, she took an apartment in the hotel. (I'm assuming he'd moved out at that point.) The family lore, as my father shared it, was that the apartment my great-grandmother got had been my great-grandfather's, but if she'd realized that she would have demanded a different space. To disguise the room, the door knocker engraved with "Ross" was removed from the door and replaced with a plain one ... and that removed door knocker is the one now on our front door.
