Paint door, always a project or dozen... to be worked on here

When we bought this place the exterior doors had little paint left on them. It appeared that the previous owners has painted them sometime back in the dark ages, maybe around 1961 when they bought the place. That is damn near 50 years with no paint. You couldn't even call it paint anymore, the surface was more like sandpaper, or raw wood. It was very rough to the touch, there were chipped out sections, and the paint was like a sponge. It just absorbed every bit of paint I put on it. That taught me the primer lesson. Always prime a door like that before putting on a coat of paint, or you will put on way too many coats before the surface becomes sealed enough to accept color. The door to the right is an example, though not the worst of the lot. This door had been red. Hard to believe because as you can see it was nearly brown when I took it on.

There was no aesthetic appeal at all, with any of the doors. Now that I think of it we are still working to achieve that goal! In that vein I decided that I could handle painting the doors. What was the worst that could happen, I make them look bad? Somebody else had achieved that lofty goal already. I started this project 3 years ago. I had no idea of how bad a door can look when painted anew, if not prepared properly. One coat taught me that lesson! I think this door took about three coats before it started to form the finish intended. Then it took two more coats to get the color to show true. 

This is not a completed door. This door still required two or three more coats to come to true color. All of those coats were required because I did not know enough to prime the door before I started the project. The door that followed did get a coat of primer to improve the final color of the surface, and cut my work load.

In door number two preparation meant removing the poorly installed glass in the door and re-glazing it. That was a torturous job, glazing the windows in the door. Thankfully Mr took that on, I just took on the paint. Believe me it too took patience and process. One the messy glazing was painted it just emphasized the bad glazing, instead of cleaning it up and making it look presentable.  So just a coat of paint is not always the solution. Sometimes it requires much more work, some scraping, some layering, some sanding, you get the idea. You have to remember though, it is a small space, and it is doable, even if not done in the same day. Do it a bit at a time, always moving towards the goal of an improved living environment a chunk of work at a time.

I had no intention of living here year round, so I went for some bright trendy colors. The purchase of this house was intended as a beach house, so bright and lively color was going to be okay. Then of course there is the boring nature of the house to begin with, bright colors seemed like they would brighten things up. I was going for painted lady Victorian.

In hindsight maybe inadvisable, but fun. Here I am three years later. My old porch furniture has also been painted with these bright colors, in fact it was painted first, and I am still not done with the doors. All doors received a perfunctory multi-coat of monotone paint, but the painted lady part of the painting job never materialized. I thought I would have some fun and try it now. Maybe not such a good idea, but it is done. Its fun like I thought, but maybe not so great looking. As Alanis Morrisette sings "you live you learn". Here are some pictures of door two. What do you think?

Then I moved on to the next victim, door three. This is where the concept and my judgement became questionable. My color choice seemed okay out in the great wide open, but looking at the colors from inside the house made it all pretty clear. This is a bold statement of color, probably too much color, bad rental color. You know what, it is pretty close to done, and considering all the projects there on to be done here, this one is going to remain garish for some time come. I'm done. Photos below. Hey now, control the laughs!

Doors were done with the same colors, but oh how the look changes when you reverse the positions. The green is a bit too powerful and bold.  I'm going to live with it a while before I decide whether to paint it over or not. I guess I am going to take a poll too. I fulfilled my goal which was to shake up boring and try something new. I'm not sure that that is a good enough reason to keep what was done. For now it is going to stay just as it is, because this old house and property is the unending source of desperate "must do immediately" projects. I know there are lots of other things to do here than play with colors. For now, it is just fine.