D.I.Y. Gone Awry...

The day we moved in we were eager to work on our house. We were looking to do a few quick projects that would spruce up the look of the house...like the fireplace and an outside door. Well as you saw, the fireplace project went wonderfully. To door project....well a week and a half later it is finally done....ish.

The idea of stripping and staining our outside, side door came from watching DIY Network where everything looks SO easy. We bought paint stripper, foam brushes, and a paint tray...just like they did. We slathered on the stripper and waited patiently for 20 minutes while it did it's job...just like they did. We excitedly grabbed our scraper and started scraping at  the bubbled paint...just like they did. We waited to see beautiful, solid wood underneath...just like they saw. Except we didn't see beautiful wood underneath. We saw another layer of paint, and then another, and another, and so on. I think there were at least 20-30 coats of paint on our lovely door. of the Frustration!! Eventually, after countless layers of stripper and innumerable minutes waited patiently, we gave up. We had to! We had to accept the fact that we would never find beautiful wood underneath all the paint.

Time to Complete Project: 1 1/2 weeks
Difficultly: High! (but it shouldn't be)
Caution: When the paint stripper says to wear gloves. Do it!
What happens if you don't? Well, it doesn't feel good. When the paint stripper first touches your skin it feels cold, like a IcyHot...great! However, a few seconds later it starts to burn! Not a good feeling...

Since It has been so long I only have one pic left of the project at the mid-point...On with the story...

We started sanding our lovely door. We sanded and sanded until I had no fingerprints left. Yes we were able to use a sanding tool on most parts of the door. However, with anything old, there was a lot of detail in the door. Many, many ridges and nooks and crannies that no sanding tool was ever going to reach. So I worked for as long as I could and finally refused to touch sand paper one more time. At this point, however, you could see no significant improvement in the look of our door. So, what else could we do?? We called in help from the power tools!

We worked hard for awhile and started noticing a difference! Thank goodness!! Then Steve's ADD kicked in...

(Sorry if this offends anyone...thought it was funny ;))

After all the sanding was finally done to our now very low standards...we decided it was time to paint! Yahoo!
This is the door after all the stripping, sanding, and taping off the glass...not to shabby right?!

Thankfully, we bought paint with primer in it already so we did not have to prime first. This is a picture after one coat of paint. After 2 coats we were satisfied and it was about to rain so we needed to get the door inside :)

And finally our LAST obstacle:

Note to all future painters:
              #1 Don't be cheap like us. Buy the Blue painters tape, not some store brand
              #2 DO NOT, I repeat DO NOT leave the tape on until the paint drys and DO NOT leave it on for
                2 more days after the paint drys...
We learned these lessons, because as we took the tape off, it not only left a very sticky residue on the glass, it also peeled the paint of with it...LOVELY DOOR :)

Here is our finished product:

Looks good from far away :) That's all that matters I guess!

Happy Wife, Happy Life!