My Boy Blue

Blue!  You’re my boy!  Or should I say door.  But let’s back up a step.  We’ll get to the blue door in just a minute.  But you see, we have this basement door.  It’s in our dining room.  And one side of it got a coat of primer a couple years ago.  That’s it.  End of story.

It’s not that it’s a bad door.  It didn’t go all gangsta on us or anything, it’s just kind of like the math geek in the corner of the room.  He blends right in, doesn’t attract attention, and just does his job.  Oh…and he’s an OLD door too.  Solid wood, original to the house kind of old.

But the door can do better than that.  He just needed an audition for American Idol or something comparable to really have a chance to shine.  Enter project painted door.  When it came to picking the color scheme for the door, I turned to the ombre staircase baluster colors for inspiration.  I loved the idea of pulling one of those colors for the door.  So I used the left over paint samples from the project to help me decide what shade of blue to paint the door.

And slapped the paint up on the door to get an idea of which color we wanted to go with.

We sampled the four lightest shades from the baluster project (from top to bottom):  Sea Breeze, Harbor Mist, Sea Sparkle, and Tidal Wave all by Valspar.  Hmmm…a little nautical theme going on.

After careful consideration, I deemed the lightest two shades my personal favorites and Colby liked the middle shades the best.  Since we both like shade number two, Harbor Mist, it became our winner.  And don’t you like how at the right angle you can see both the basement door and the balusters?!  One of the reasons why we picked shades from the baluster project.

Not only was I going to paint the dining room side of the door, but the basement side too.  In the summer, it’s open relatively frequently due to our meager attempts at airing out our damp basement.  That and the workshop is down there and during weekend projects it’s a constant up and down.  Since it would be caught open so much, the back side needed a little paint job too.

Oh…and that’s my friend Mr. Albert Einstein (in poster form) hanging out there on the basement staircase wall.  I know it’s weird, but Colby thought it would be weirder to hang him where people could actually see him.  Foolish Colby.  But alas, the basement staircase is where he “hangs” out.  Har har har!

Before I could get to painting the door we had to remove all the hardware including the old pencil sharpener on the inside of the door.

Which we use quite regularly and love.  We also took off all the hinges and the old doorknob, which needed some serious refinishing after years of layered on paint and grime.

Then the door went outside:

Where I scuffed it up using the orbital sander:

Then layered on a couple coats of white primer:

Before breaking out Valspar’s Harbor Mist in a quart size of semi-gloss.

After two quick coats of paint on both sides of the door, he was officially a star. He may not be quite Carrie Underwood caliber just yet (I envision that as a hot pink color with sparkles) but at least he’s braved the auditions!

So now the door sits in the dining room until I can get around to refinishing the hardware.

Which I’m thinking of spray painting an oil rubbed bronze color.  And I also need to prime/paint the woodwork around the door.

So I know we needed to start ANOTHER project like we needed a kick in the pants with a frozen boot.  Nobody needs that.  But we did it anyway and it makes us happy checking that task off the to-do list.  Now let’s just hope that the door doesn’t sit in the dining room for months (kind of like other started but yet to be finished projects) while awaiting freshly painted hardware and trim.

Pssst…So just a heads up, as our wedding day quickly approaches, we may be posting slightly more sporadically.  I’m going to try my darndest to post regularly Sunday through Thursday evenings, but if I miss a post here or there, don’t fret.  I’m okay.  Just tackling some why-did-I-wait-so-long-to-start-this wedding projects.