The finished artificial stone on the bedroom exterior door is ready!

Let me remind you that this is what the door looked like before I came up with the idea of ​​replacing the Hardie trim with faux stone.

I hated how this looked, but I couldn’t find a solution for a long time. I figured my only option was to paint the trim the same gray as the house and hope it goes away. And in reality, this simple route probably would have done a lot to disguise it. But I know myself very well and know without a doubt that the trim would have bothered me, no matter what color it was. So I took the trim off, prepped the area for the concrete, and made faux concrete bricks in place of the Hardie trim.

And now that ugly decoration has been replaced with faux concrete stone. I would like to point out that even though the stone is finished, I still haven’t had time to finish painting the white trim and door. I’m going to do that today. At the moment the gray paint looks pretty messy on the part of the door panel that was supposed to be white, but it will all be painted by the end of the day. But I was too excited about the faux stone to wait another day to show you how it turned out.

Now let me back up a bit and show you a “work in progress” image because I want to point out a few things. Firstly, you’ll notice that, at least for now, I’ve decided to ignore the wobbly area above the door and just paint it gray to see if that makes it go away. It’s clearly visible in this picture because it has white caulk on it.

But at least for now I’m pretty happy with the way it disappears when everything is painted the same color. And remember, my main concern is how it looks from the street, not how it looks with someone standing three feet from the door, since this is not the main entrance to our house.

The second thing I want to point out is that I did something different on the right side of the door. You have to remember that I’ve never done anything like this before, so I basically made it up as I went along. So when I created the left side, the side I created first, I decided which rows of stones I wanted to extend all the way around to the door jamb and which rows I wanted to create whole new, separate stones to cover the area where the ornament had been. Because I tried to be random with this decision, I ended up with two rows of new, separate bricks next to each other, which aligned the mortar lines vertically.

It’s a small detail, but it’s one of those things I should have avoided. It’s like when you’re installing hardwood floors, you never want the ends of your boards to line up in rows right next to each other. But since it’s one of those little details that always just bothers me, and it obviously didn’t bother me enough because I didn’t notice it until I started on the right side of the door, I decided to let it go instead of fixing it.

I think this is more true to the arrangement of the original stone on the house and is just nicer to the eye.

After finishing all the brick and mortar and giving it a few hours to cure, I primed everything with Behr Concrete and Mortar Primer. I had never used this product before and it is more like the consistency of water than paint. Of course I didn’t read all of the directions to after When I finished the primer, I noticed that it said it wasn’t intended for vertical surfaces. Well. It was finished and it soaked into the concrete really well. But because it’s so thin, it was a very messy process. Imagine trying to “paint” a vertical surface with a brush and water. It will get everywhere and run down your arm as you reach up to reach the higher areas. But I did it and the porous concrete really soaked up the primer.

I let the whole thing dry for four hours according to the instructions and then painted it with two coats of Sherwin Williams Duration exterior paint in Mindful Gray to match the rest of the house. But as you’ll recall, since the rest of the house was painted a few years ago, I had to do a few color adjustments to match the color. It’s still not a perfect match, but I don’t think it’s noticeable. The new paint is a little shinier than the old one, but I hope the shine wears off quickly in the Central Texas sun and heat.

Today I’m going to get the trim and door painted and then clean up my work area, so try not to get distracted by my mess. But people. Now look at that door! It’s certainly not perfect, but it’s so much better than it was!

And it will only get better when I get the white trim painted so that there is a crisp, clear distinction between the stone and the trim around the door.

So what do you think about the wobbly area above the door? I took the picture below from a distance, but I was only about halfway between the door and the street. And from this distance, the area above the door doesn’t bother me at all. But you can tell me what you think. Should I leave it alone or does it need a little more work?

I think the uniform color alone did a great job of concealing this area, but be honest with me if you think I should put a little more work into concealing it.

Of course, the closer you get, the more obvious it becomes. But most people will never get that close to that door. They will only see it from the street or sidewalk as they walk up to our front door.