Our house is quite old, and there are a whole lot of things about it that are definitely less than perfect. But we are so thankful for it, and we're doing the best that we have with what we've got.
Our driveway is laid out in such a way that pretty much forces everybody to come to the back door. Before you get to the kitchen door you have to go through a glass door into the laundry room. If I know somebody is coming, I will of course have the laundry room cleaned up a little bit, but when I'm just going through my daily routine, there may be piles of laundry out there, the floor may be dirty, etc. If the mail carrier or UPS driver comes up to leave something on the porch, they get a full view of the inside of my laundry room, regardless of what it may look like at the time.
And if I happen to be out there doing laundry when somebody unexpected comes to the door, I may not exactly feel like being seen, depending on my appearance at the time.
We used to keep a curtain on the door, but once we had kids, that made things look even worse than they already did. They would pull it off of the door, and they got little baby snot stains all over it.
We wanted to put frosting paint on it to provide some privacy, but we didn't want the entire thing covered. We wanted to think of a way to create some sort of design on it, but we didn't want to create a huge, time-consuming project for ourselves. My mom suggested making a diamond pattern since that could be made with straight lines. That was a great idea, but I wanted to use really thin tape so that the un-frosted part would not be thick enough for people to easily see through the door. The only problem was that we couldn't find anything like that anywhere.
One day I was at an indoor yard sale that our town has (it's like a giant thrift store, but everything is just thrown on tables or in boxes and nothing is priced). I spotted this and I knew immediately that it was exactly what I was looking for. They charged me a whopping 33 cents for it!
I didn't even know what this stuff was, but my mom said it's for using with typewriters. Okay then, that's why I didn't know. I did a search, though, and you can still buy this stuff on Amazon. Now you know where to get it if you decide you want to do a door like mine! 🙂
Once I found that, we got to work right away procrastinated forever on designing our door.
We finally got to it this last weekend, and I am so glad it's done!
Here's how we did it:
First, we washed the door thoroughly, inside and out. We just used vinegar water. I'm not sure if a commercial cleaner might leave a residue that would interfere with the paint sticking.
We started our diamond design by making an “x” corner to corner on the door. We used our fingernails and really made sure the tape was secured tightly to the door. After we added each piece of tape, we numbered them so that we would know the order in which to take them off.
Then we measured 5 inches away from each line and placed another piece of tape top to bottom on the door.
We continued to measure 5 inches away from each line and place new lines diagonally top to bottom. We used a dry erase marker on the outside of the door to mark our 5 inch measurements. We made a mark at the top and bottom of where each piece of tape should go, then matched the tape up to the mark on the inside of the door. By matching up the marks at the top and bottom, we were able to keep our lines perfectly straight.
Here is the door after we finished taping off our design. It was getting dark – it took a lot longer than I thought it would.
Then we taped off the edges of the door and the door handle, and we covered any surrounding areas with newspaper. This picture was taken after the first coat of paint had already been sprayed, which is why it's kind of hazy. I was dealing with a dirty diaper at the time, and my poor husband did not realize that the laundry room windows could be opened. I really don't recommend spraying without the windows open!
This is what we were spraying on the door. I'm not sure if my husband sprayed two coats or three, but I do know that it took two entire cans of paint.  (They don't sell this particular brand on Amazon, but this is the same thing.  Buy it here.)
We let the paint dry for just a few minutes before we removed the tape. We didn't want to let it dry too much for fear it would crack when we pulled the tape. It was completely dark by the time we got done. You can see how nice it's going to be to be able to be in the laundry with the light on at night and not have people able to see straight inside our house!
Now the mailman can leave packages on our porch without getting a scary view of me in my PJ's!
It's really hard to get a good shot of it because of the glare. The lines came out perfect – no seeping of the paint anywhere even though it sort of looks that way in the pictures. I'm very happy to finally have some privacy in my laundry room, and I'm excited that it looks pretty as well!
Update: I just discovered this frosted glass film on Amazon! It seems like it might be easier to just stick the film on than to tape everything off and spray it. Plus you don't have to worry about the spray paint getting chipped off if you use an adhesive film.
Find the adhesive film here.
