front porch update

hey all (3 of you)!  so, right before z's first birthday party hubs and i undertook the task of repainting the back deck from its original bran yard red to a nice gray-beige (it was supposed to be a darker shade than what it turned out to be, but it's still better than the read in my opinion).  anyway, we weren't super happy with the paint that we used on the back deck (we used olympic's rescue-it.  it's slightly gritty, i think there's silica or something in it so that the deck isn't slippery, but when painted on it becomes really uneven with patches of grit thicker in some spots and it looks terrible).  so this time we tried rustoleum's restore 4x and we were much happier with it.  it also has a little texture to it, but it's not as gritty as the rescue-it and therefore paints on really evenly and nicely.  also, the color was much more true.  we wanted to paint the front porch a darker color.  it was previously painted white (why?!) so whenever it rained (in seattle?  hello?) our footprints would muddy up the porch and it looked so dirty all the time.  we have plans to paint the house in the future, so i wanted to pick a color that would coordinate well with whatever we chose, so---tada!  i decided on a medium gray.  no surprise there, haha!  a few weeks ago i ripped off the disgusting, water-logged, rotting carpet that the previous owners decided to install on the stairs(again, in seattle?) and we inspected the damage to the wood underneath.  not too bad considering the carpet is wet 10 months out of the year.  hubs replaced some boards and added some treated plywood to the top of the tread of the stairs and then painted it while z and i were out of town.  it looks so much better!  but now, the black door doesn't go too well with it, so my next project is to find a paint color that i like and paint the inside and outside of the door.  eventually i'd like to add a big tall planter box and some other decorative accents on the porch, but that will happen later on.  here is the before and after of the porch (well, turns out i didn't actually take any before pictures of the porch, but if you look to the left of the picture below you can see the bright yellow color of the stairs, how dirty they look and perhaps a glance at the dark gray carpet on the top of them?):

anyway, here is what it looks like now:

i'm hoping to paint the door something like this:

the color, not the antlers and stuff

in fact, i'm hoping to do something like this color palette with the outside of the house:

but of course, i could change my mind.  i also am a big fan of the smoky dark blue-gray colors, too.  so anyway, that's what's up with the porch.  hopefully i can get this door painted soon!