Front Door Fiasco

Fiasco: noun; abject or utterly humiliating failure.

This is our house 2 years ago.  (Notice the bat Halloween decorations on the door.)  2 years ago, I decided I REALLY wanted to paint our front door.  I wanted it to be a color that looked good on our house, and I wanted it to be fun and inviting.

 

I spent many hours researching pictures of door colors, and I even picture "tested" a few out to see which shade would look best.

One full year later (notice the next year's Halloween decorations) I woke up and decided today was the day.  It was time to paint the front door. Reminder: I was a HUGE 7 month pregnant woman at this time.  I was emotional and nesting like a crazy person, and I wanted our front door to be perfect for our little baby to come home to the first time.  So, I picked out a nice dark blue paint color, spent hours and hours taping the door with painters tape, laying down plastic, and preparing to paint...

...and it turned out to be a disaster!

 

Evidently, painting a piping hot metal door is not a good idea.  As soon as the paint touched the door it immediately dried, so when I would try and get more paint to paint on top of it, it streaked, dried, and clumped.  It was a mess.  I was so mad at myself for being so stupid.  I couldn't even take a picture of how bad it was, because it made me sick to look at it.  The above pic was taken for something else and only shows a small glimpse of how bad it was.  Since I was an emotional wreck, I just cried and cried and cried.  I couldn't even look at the door.  It was ruined and would never be the same again.  Jaxon would be coming home to an ugly door and a mom who couldn't do anything right (at least that was my thinking at the time).  I promised myself I would fix it soon, but winter came, snow fell, Jaxon was born...and nothing ever happened.

Until now.  So... I guess that makes it about 1 year later.  I got sick of my ugly front door, and decided to do something about it.  I started at 10am.  To prevent another hot metal door fiasco, I took the door off its hinges and put it in our shady garage to cool down.  Then, I sealed our entry way with plastic to avoid "air conditioning the world" as my parents would say.

In order to get the old paint off, I had to use paint thinner/stripper.  Wow...that stuff doesn't mess around.  It even stripped right through the gloves I was wearing and through my top layer of skin.  Ouch.  That process took about 5 hours.

(Look close and you can see Jax hanging out in the background.  Don't worry, I fully aired out any paint thinner fumes before I would let him near my working area.)

Then, I had to paint the door with primer (which I didn't do last time).  While waiting for the primer to dry, I realized I really didn't like the color I picked the first time around for the door.  It was darker than I wanted and wasn't fresh and inviting.  It was now or never if I wanted to make a change, so I went to Ho-Depo, closed my eyes, and picked the first paint swatch my fingers came to.  Feww...It's a good thing I didn't use that color, because hot pink would have looked horrible.  I ended up bringing home a nice colorful teal-ish color and got to work painting.

At 10pm I was FINALLY finished!  This 12 hour plus project was seriously a huge pain in my (insert any body part).  Literally...my legs and back were killer the next few days from being hunched over in a squatting position scraping and painting all day.  I am so glad to have this project done and checked off my to-do list.  The journey was tougher and longer than I imagined, but I finally have the front door I wanted.

Before and After