Red Door Treatment

A couple weekends ago, we spiced up our front door. It was a boring, just-like-the-rest-of-the-street white:

After 1 coat of paint it was sort of pinkish:

Finally, after 4 coats, it is now a bright and charming red (Valspar's Romantic Attachment):

The significance of a red front door:

• In early America, a red front door was used in the under ground railroad as a sign for the slaves traveling north that that house was a safe house.
• In China, it's tradition to paint the front door red before the new year, to invite good luck and happiness.
• In Catholocism, the red door on a chapel symbolized the blood of Christ, and other martyrs, to signify that the ground beyond the door was holy, and a sanctuary from physical and spiritual evils.
• In Ireland, front doors are painted red to ward-off ghosts and evil spirits.
• In Scotland when you paid off your mortgage you painted your door red.

Clearly none of these reasons were our motives. So why red?

Well there's plenty of red accents throughout our home with the brick columns, brick patio, fireplace, mailbox flag, fuzzy slippers, rubber spatula, Charles Shaw, border collie... so it was the obvious choice.

And I like it.

Purely aesthetic, no significant meaning - sometimes we're just plain shallow. So there.

But if you knock on our door, in need of a place to spend the night, we will happily oblige. But no guarantees this house is a safe house. We do keep dogs and booze here afterall.