448 Yellow Squares Later…


I have been wanting to paint our door yellow for awhile now.  After getting dozens of paint chips from the store and deciding on a color, I decided to go for it. I foolishly thought it would be a one day project. You’d think I would have learned my lesson by now that home projects always take at least twice as long as you expect. In this case, it was much longer.

Our door before was brown and the glass storm door was old.  Yes, we should have done this years ago, but the exterior of the house and yard have always been the least of my worries.

After seeing so many cute yellow doors, like this image from Pinterest, I knew that is what I wanted to go with.

I finally decided on Primrose Yellow from Pantone.  We got an exterior paint in Satin. It had the primer in it, but knowing that the door was dark brown, we decided to paint a coat of zinsser no sand primer.  And there were holes to patch.

I decided it would be fun to go ahead and paint the inside of the door yellow as well.

So after reading tutorials that said “if you start in the morning and leave your door open all day, it will be totally done by the end of the day!” Sweet, a one day Saturday project! So, after getting the coat of primer on, I knew the painting process would be a little tedious.

See all those squares? They have to be painted with a brush.  There are 32 on each SIDE of the door. So, with each coat of paint, I was painting 64 little squares.

And since the door was so dark brown and the yellow is so light, I just kept having to paint coat after coat after coat. But, since it had to be dry by the time the door was closed, I had to only paint one or two coats a day. So, yes this Saturday project was lasting ALL week.

How many coats did it end up taking? SEVEN. Seven coats of paint. That would be a total of 448 squares that I painted.  And since I live in Kansas City with 100% humidity, the door is still tacky.

However, I love the yellow! It’s so happy.  It is looking much brighter (especially the inside picture) than it is in real life, although it is pretty bright.

We also took the storm door off.  So, now we need to touch up and fix some of those trim pieces around it.  I’m also thinking of doing a fun hanging light fixture (hopefully I can find something at Restore or a thrift store) and also putting something on the brick wall to the right.

Looking back, I should have done 2 coats of primer.  Because it took so many coats, we had to go back and get another quart of paint. I think doing an extra coat of primer would have saved me from doing this.  But I’m sure I can find something to do with the leftover yellow paint!

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