After reading a ton of diy blogs, one of the projects I have been dying to start is repainting my front door.  Our door was originally painted black by the builder to match our shutters, just like they did for all the other houses in the neighborhood.  I love the look of the black shutters on blue siding, but not so much the black door surrounded by brick.  It made things look too matchy-matchy.  I wanted something that would stand out.  I tend to be more traditional in my tastes, but this was something semi-modern that I really wanted to do.



Inspired by newly painted doors from here and here, I was ready to start!

To summarize my process, here are the steps I knew I would have to do:

• Choose a color.
• Clean door very well.  
• Smooth out any rough spots.
• Apply paint with 2.5" angled brush and small roller.
• Enjoy!

We chose several swatches at the local hardware store in order to pin down the perfect shade.  I was cheering for the yellow team and Nestor was leading the red team.  I honestly loved both colors, but yellow was calling my name.  And funny fact...the color that won was Acorn Squash by Olympic.  Doesn't it sound like a perfect match now that we're in autumn?  We chose the semi-gloss with primer for exterior, the Olympic Icon line.  We have successfully used primer/paint colors in the past on other projects so I figured it would work well enough for our door, too. 



Then came the hard part...putting that dripping yellow paintbrush to the door.  There would be no going back after that.  That first coat was pretty scary.  I never knew the infinite amount of nooks and crannies one door could possibly have.  It looked horrible.  Really horrible.  It made me second guess myself several times, but I crossed my fingers and listed to the diy masters when they said the first coat is always the worst.  Because of the earlier dusk hours this month, we were only able to get four coats on before needing to let the paint cure before closing the door.  We simply left the door slightly ajar with a stool behind it to keep it from swinging all the way open.  As an extra bonus, it functioned as a cat-opening-door alarm.  Love multi-taskers.












































I had hoped to post about this accomplished goal sooner, but life just didn't work out that way.  Even though we used paint with primer in the mix, it still wasn't enough to combat the solid black door.

Lesson Learned:  Always prime over black paint!

All in all, this supposedly quick one day project took 11 coats to complete over the course of 7 days.  A lot of the wait time was due to rainy weather, but really...seven days?!?!  Eleven coats?!?!?!  It got to the point where Nestor started helping me paint the last couple of coats.  I think he took pity on me because this man hates to paint anything.  This was my first time using Olympic paint so I don't know if the Valspar would have performed better.  I don't even know if I would have started the project if I knew how long it would take...




















But the end result was very much worth it.  Seeing that door as I go down the driveway really does make me happy.  It's like my house is saying "hello, welcome home".