This was supposed to be a victory post. I was going to write about how we repainted our front entry door and how awesome it came out. Didn’t happen. Instead, this is a mistake/lesson learned post.
The background:
Lisa had noticed that some people in the blogosphere had been painting the sidelight frames to match their entry door. Generally, if left alone, they are the same semi-gloss white as the exterior trim. I think the idea to paint them is that it enhances the look of the door and makes it look more full. Lisa made the executive decision to try it and so we set out to accomplish this fairly simple task.
On top of the sidelight paint, we needed to do some touching up of our front door. Last winter, a certain door wreath, which will remain nameless, was responsible for some scratches to the door paint.
Here’s the front door before the paint.
Here’s the door scratches
The problem with this project starts with the paint. We looked through our build spec and were able to identify the paint as “Carolina Slate.” OK great. Now to find the manufacturer. The build spec didn’t say anything about who makes the paint. So, after calling around, we ended up at Sherwin Williams. Apparently, our home builder gets most of their paints from SW. The salesman at SW told me that the color would be close, but not dead-on and advised me against using it as a touch-up paint. I’m OK with that, although it meant painting the entire door and not just the scratch marks. This is pretty standard practice when it comes to mixing paint. Not worried at this point.
The Execution
After buying a quart and taping up our door, we’re ready to go.
Thoughts as the first coat dried… it’s too blue. Waaaaaayyyy too blue. It not only doesn’t match, it really doesn’t match. We decided to finish the job and then do some thinking. To make matters worse, I put the second coat on the door around 6pm and it never dried. The next morning the paint was still wet in a couple areas and had started to run from the morning dew. After wiping it down with a couple paper towels, this door project had officially snow balled into a disaster.
Here’s the after
We really like the effect the painted sidelights add to the house. We’re not in love with the paint color. At this point, we’re thinking about popping off one of those shutters and taking them to Sherwin Williams for paint matching if that’s even possible. We may have to wait for a nice warm day now to paint it. Not interested in waiting on this until spring!!
It’s a nice color, but I miss the grey.
Any suggestions for finding the right “Carolina Slate”? Anyone else have any “I don’t love this paint color” stories?
