Rowhouse – front of house done!

The two doors I bashed together for the rowhouse are the white and stained versions of the Newport door from Majestic Mansions. Though both pictures on their website show the sunburst with the lines cut out (so the color of the surface behind them shows through), only my white door came this way. On the stained door, the semi-circle at the center of the sunburst was cut out but the lines were etched into the wood. This one one of many slight differences between the two doors, that made me wonder if the door was redesigned at some point.

I didn’t want a contrasting color to show through, so I cut a piece of posterboard to place behind the sunburst.

I painted this mossy green, and then glued it to the back of the sunburst.

Here’s how it looks in place.

After cutting my side trim, I mistakenly thought that it was too long and sanded it down. The porch might have been sitting on something that made it slightly taller than it should have been. So, I had gaps at the bottom of the trim. Rather than cut and paint new pieces (because I’m lazy!), I decided to try to cover up the gaps with more trim. More on that in a sec.

First, I had to figure out what to do with the gaping hole at the bottom of the door.

I played around with some pieces of spare strip wood until I came up with something that just fit.

I painted this to match the house, and glued it in so it sticks out from the house just a bit, to meet up with the edge of the porch.

Then I glued in the base of the stained door, to act as a doorstop. This wasn’t entirely necessary since my hinges wouldn’t allow the door to swing forward. But it looks nice so I figured I might as well use the piece.

I cut some 1:12 crown molding to use as “feet” at the bottom of the side trim pieces.

The gap on the left side wasn’t as big and I was able to get away with keeping the piece of trim I’d accidentally cut too short, but on the right there was an annoying hole that I just couldn’t figure out how to hide nicely, so I ended up redoing the trim piece after all…

Since the porch is not attached to the house (yet), these feet just hang into space. Hopefully they won’t get knocked off at some point. I haven’t decided if I’ll permanently attach the porch or not.

With the outside trim finished, I moved on to the inside. In this picture you can see how the lines on the sunburst are etched, rather than open holes like on the outside. I didn’t like how the wallpaper peeped through the semi-circle hole, so decided to fill it in black to look like it was burned into the wood. I started by drawing a pencil line around the semi-circle as a guide.

Then I very carefully painted this area black. The room is smaller than the length of a paintbrush so I had to be careful to angle the brush and not get paint on the walls in the process (that would have been a disaster!)

And here’s the end result. The side trim is from the broken door. The hall cabinet is a Molly’s House purchase.

And with that, my front door is complete!

To finish up the front of the house, I added the last few windows to the bay, and “over window” trim from Victorian Doll House Wood Works to the top and bottom of each window.

My original plan had been to use one of these trim doodads under the window over the porch, but the porch railing made it hard to see and the windows looked off-balance with embellishments underneath and not on top. So I made an impulsive decision to rip it off and use it (plus two extras I had) on the tops of the bottom windows instead.

I had enough of the sunburst embellishments to do the same on the top row of windows. I’d had other plans for these (they were going to go under the other windows on the sides of the house) but I think the front looks better this way. I can always buy more if I need to, but according to my library book, having a fancy facade on the front and plainer trim on the other sides of the house is consistent with San Francisco Victorians.