This post is sponsored by HANDy Paint

Over the last week, the exterior of our cabin has been getting a new, slick black paint job. We hired out that part of the painting to avoid getting up on the nearly vertical 25 ft. ladder and we found a crew that would do it all for $1800–worth it! However, we knew we could handle painting the doors ourselves, especially since when they started we were still not sure what color we’d go with.

There are 4 sets of doors. These main ones you see that lead out to the upper deck. A pair of similar doors on the lower deck. Our “front door” that’s actually in the back of the house (you can see when we replaced it here) and a door on an upper deck on the back above the front door. To minimize the look of all of those doors and really put the accent on the windows, we decided to paint them the same black as the exterior–Cabot’s Solid Stain in Black.

Before starting, we took a screwdriver and scraped off the old glue around the windows and doors that had seeped out over the years.

We pulled out our trusty HANDy Paint Cups for the task. It holds up to a pint of paint or stain so Chris and I could both tackle a set without having to make multiple trips to the paint can.

And maybe the best part is the magnetic brush holder that keeps the brush from falling into the paint when not in use, keeping our brushes a lot cleaner and lasting a lot longer, too.

Now the doors blend right in with the big, gorgeous windows. (Can’t wait to show you those beautiful floors up close!)

The exterior paint job is getting finished this week and we promise to give you a full, pulled-back look at the whole thing as soon as they finish up, but here’s a big sneak peek!

We have decided to keep the decks more natural; keeping the rustic, worn look and just putting on a clear coat to protect the wood. I love the juxtaposition of the more worn wood with the sleeker black exterior.

We let the HANDy Paint Cups dry overnight and peeled out the solid stain in nearly one sheet to clean them.

So many of you weighed in on colors you wanted to see the doors painted on an Instagram live we did, there were a lot of votes from black, but also dark green, and even mustard yellow. Seeing the reflections of the fall leaves and mountains and water in the windows, we’re so happy we kept the windows the focal point…although I can’t get enough of that black either.

SaveSave