The Front Door Color Conundrum
You ever have a project that sort of sneaks up on you really fast but you’ve sort of been planning it for awhile? That’s the case with our exterior paint job.
Full disclosure: We have never painted our exterior … and we’ve lived here 13 years. For comparison, exteriors are supposed to be painted roughly ever seven years. So we’re like double overdue.
It’s not that we’re neglectful homeowners. Truly, we’ve planned to do this for awhile. But when I say we are always working on projects around here, it’s no exaggeration. Because we plan to do it ourselves, we’ve just never really found a pocket of time to commit.
Even this go-around, we’re only painting the front and back of the cottage. The sides will have to wait a bit longer.
We originally settled on a blue during our One Room Challenge project, but the second blue choice just never really excited us. But with Rob ready to move forward on the porch, finalizing the color became a priority last week.
Something told me my little cottage would look extra sweet in green, so we picked out three paint samples last week: Basil, Dried Thyme, and Oakmoss, all from Sherwin Williams.
Rob painted the samples on our cottage back on Monday, and within 30 minutes we had our answer: Dried Thyme. It was the most beautiful vintage-colored green. We immediately went to the store to purchase a five-gallon bucket to get started.
But rather than start in the back, Rob actually started painting the front. For a few reasons this made more sense:
- I love decorating our house for the holidays, so getting the front of the house finished before hanging Halloween decor seemed to make the most sense since we roll right from that into Christmas decor.
- We also thought painting the front would give us more real estate to see the green. The siding on the back of the house is limited, so we were afraid we wouldn’t get a good feel for the color if we started back there.
Once Rob painted the green on the house, I realized just how deeply I loved the color. And how we absolutely needed to address the teal door color ASAP.
Our plan was to strip the door back to exterior wood. It’s a beautiful, historic door with incredible hardware. We thought it would be so stunning without paint.
And that’s where the trouble started.
We tried Klean Strip because we haven’t had a ton of great experience with Citristrip. It took off the first two layers ok. But the bottom layer was incredibly stubborn. It reminded me so much of the bottom layer of paint I battled on the wooden cabinet I stripped. And what made it even worse was that the areas we couldn’t remove it from happened to be the grooved edges where a sander just wouldn’t work if we wanted to maintain the detail.
Rob isn’t usually one to give up on something, but I could tell he was increasingly frustrated with the stubborn paint. After like five paint stripper applications, all sorts of tiny tools, and a belt sander.
I’m ready to call it quits on the dream of a bare wood door just for the sake of expediency, but Rob really wants to give stripping another go. I’ll give it another 24 hours; then, we’ll pivot.
To prepare for that possibility, my mind has been awash with front door paint color ideas ever since. Here are the top contenders:
- Sherwin Williams Toile Red
- Sherwin Williams Cut the Mustard
- Sherwin Williams Sierra Redwood
I’m going for a very heritage look to our house. I love warm, earthy tones. And I feel like any of these options would really give such a charming, welcoming feel to the front of our cottage. I’m really, drawn to the red, but I’m worried my house will look like Christmas every day with a green and red color combo.
Stay tuned in stories today as we figure out our next move: spend more time attempting to strip, or surrender to paint. My kids are begging for the Halloween decorations to go up, and I don’t think I’ll be able to put them off much longer!
