When you buy a house built and designed by someone else, you often have to live with some of their choices – or spend a great deal of money changing them. And anyone who has been reading my blog for any length of time knows that this is not my dream house and that Mr. Red Door is extremely conservative in spending, so I have been living with many of the choices of the original owners of this home since we bought it in 1986 ~ we are only the second owners. (Did I ever tell you the original owners moved into this house on the same day Mr. Red Door and I got married?? How cool is that?)
And if you know me, you also know that I choose to decorate with warm colors ~ inside or out. But I have to live with the exterior white aluminum trim and windows as well as the faded cream vinyl siding. Yes, I know you can paint siding and aluminum trim these days, but we aren’t kids anymore and we don’t need to add ‘siding paint upkeep’ to our chore list.
So instead I have come up with other ways to warm up the exterior. Fortunately we have a colonial style front door with side lights and architectural fan design to work with. In the last two years I have used a warm color on the formerly white garage doors, entry step (who says they have to be gray?) light post and mailbox post. And of course there was my RED door (and red window boxes on the garage windows).
Well this spring the RED front door screamed out that it needed to be repainted and because there was not enough of the old paint, I needed to purchase new paint. A prefect excuse to go for a change in the color RED to warm up the front even more, right? And I knew EXACTLY the color I wanted! Thanks to my good friend Dan Weaver, a writer for A Primitive Place magazine, keeper of the blog over at Yesterday Once More, decorator extraordinaire, and a general all around nice guy, I choose the same color he used on some of his interior trim work and on his front door as well. When I saw that color inside his home and heard him describe it, I knew it was going to become part of my décor at some point.
Let me introduce you to Behind My Kiln Door ~Yes, the color is called Kiln by Martha Stewart at Home Depot. It is a very warm brown red and I love it. To me it is reminiscent of the barn red I love and have used since the very beginning of my love affair with colonial décor. 
In these first few pics I was letting the paint cure hadn’t rehung my door box yet. 
These were taken after rain on Sunday so the garden and grass colors really were that vibrant. 
I think Martha choose the perfect name for this paint after all…
… it reminds me of my favorite item to collect and decorate with…
~ redware ~ which of course is fired in a kiln. 
See what I mean??
Here it is with the door box back on in the sun yesterday…
…and under gray skies today…
No, that’s not snow… see our cherry tree below… isn’t it pretty? Yesterday….
and today… it’s already loosing it’s beautiful blossoms and the forsythia are dropping too.
Thanks Dan for finding just the right color for your door ~ and mine! Next I need to paint the new window boxes I got for Mother’s Day! 
To see Dan’s door and the rest of his wonderful home, click ~HERE~.
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I just have to share a cute picture of my favorite little person in the whole world!! Last week as we were playing outside, Fed Ex delivered the big box with Lili’s new climber/slide. She saw the picture on the box and got all excited so I knew I had to put it together right away. Bampee installed some anchoring screws when he got home but I got the pieces snapped together in minutes. It was pretty darn easy! Lili climbed up on it and sat on the top and said “Meemee – I happy. I love it! ” I quickly snapped this with my cell phone. Lili you make Meemee happy! 
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Today I am thankful for~
Chocolate covered strawberries
Lili’s expanding vocabulary
Spring blossoms
Fresh asparagus
Disposable diapers
Thanks so much for stopping by and making Behind My Red Door part of you day.
Until next time – warm hugs, Linda
