The Tale of the Turquoise Door

Are you ready to hear about The Tale of the Turquoise Door? Make yourself comfortable because it's a long one.

This is what it looked like when we bought the house.





This door handle had a horrible texture that made my iron-defficient body cringe every time that I had to touch it.... and HONESTLY something inside wore out and we had to buy a new one. But... see that big square around the handle?? It had been on so long that the door had scratches and such, so we couldn't just replace the handle, we had to paint the door.

So off to Home Depot we went. After what was probably hours of paint color discussion (including facebook friends' input!), Cam decided on a color out of the Glidden book I had in my paint sample stash. It was a beautiful muted turquoise. I put in my order for paint and when I got the can back, the little drying dot sample on the top was the lightest POWDER blue I've ever seen. Nothing close to my choice. When I spoke to the paint lady (do they have an official title?? paint lady sounds rude.... paint counter assistant??) about it, she explained that she had to get the sample of the same name off of the swatch wall to match it to and the colors must have been slightly off....and that seems to be a problem with Glidden paint samples....... Well! That would have been nice to know before I ordered a $12 quart of POWDER BLUE paint.

She tried to darken the paint.... and after twenty minutes of trial and error, she could tell I was frustrated. I explained that it was for my front door and I really wanted the color that I had brought in. I don't usually stand up for myself, but this paint choice took a LONG TIME and I wanted what I wanted....right?!?!? I was going to get it. I offered to pay for the original can of paint, but she didn't make us, which I thanked her for. I really didn't want $12 worth of what was now country blue paint.

 Supposedly, they don't do COLOR MATCHING (isn't that what Home Depot or Lowes advertise all the time!?!?), so you have to find a swatch from the wall for them to get the code off of. OK.... SO I chose another aqua-ish color that was the closest I could find to my original.... 

I got the paint home and it still was not the color I imagined, so I started adding acrylic paint from my craft supplies and got it a litle closer. I didn't mess with it too much because I was afraid of having to go back for ANOTHER can of paint after completely ruining this can. 

So the original project started with the handle, right? Cam and I stood in the knob/handle/lever section of Home Depot for what seemed like forever, and got the opinion of three employees. We decided to splurge on a big and fancy brushed nickel handle like this:

Luckily, before we drilled a new hole the next day, we realized that our door would have looked really goofy with this handle. Not sure why our handle holes are so low on the door, but the bottom of the above handle would have only been about 2 feet off of the ground. Very awkward! SO.... that got returned! We saved some money though!

I removed all of the hardware and filled in holes and dents. I started to fill in around this square and decided that feather the edges with sandpaper was better.

I had to fill in some major holes from the previous door knocker.

The filler that the woman at Home Depot suggested. It worked very well!

After all of my patches were dry and sanded, I wiped the door down with a damp rag and put on two coats of primer.

Ever lined your paint trays with foil!??! O M G! The BEST time saver ever!

Not sure what's up with the lighting?!? Some of it looks blue??

I started with the insets, then finished the interior rectangles, then went on to the middle vertical line, then the two middle horizontal lines, and then the outside perimeter. I searched around for the best way to paint a door and this and my door definitely looks professional. I used a narrow sponge roller.

Door Complete....


Ever thought about when you paint the outside of a door and change the hardware, what the interior of the door will look like?? yup, that needs painted too! so.....It got primer and white paint that I luckily had on hand, or it would have been ANOTHER trip to Home Depot! See how this process got so drawn out!

After I had the door aqua, I really wasn't sure what I thought and I wanted to head to get yellow paint (which is really the color I wanted but hubby chose aqua), but we knew we had to paint the storm door, so I waited to see how it looked with the new paint.

I cleaned and taped off the door, primed it with three layers (I was going from black to white!) and then put on two layers of exterior white paint from Glidden.

I wasn't happen with the handle being white, so I taped off around the handle very neatly, then taped plastic (and the FINEST plastic might I add!) around it and spray painted it with brushed nickel spray paint that I also had on hand. It looks kinda cheesy close up, but good from a distance! haha

I decided not to paint the interior of the storm door because right now, replacing all of the weather stripping is not in our budget or something that sounds like much fun! haha

The new hardware...it's brushed nickel, but the lighting makes it look champagne?!?!

Finished....Finally... What started as changing the door handle became such a job, but I finally decided that I like it. Now, I want to paint or replace the light fixture with white or silver... and MAYBE paint the shutters white!?!? Cam says I'm nuts and that we are not changing things every year, but I'm still new to this homeowner thing I'm just trying to find out what I like :)   

The two cans of paint were $24, KILZ and spray paint I already had and the hardware was $50... so for $74+tax, we got a great curb appeal face lift :) I'm very happy with it. It bright, but it's cheery and I think it's really going to pop against my holiday decorations!