Repainting the Front Door

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copper colored paint, don't paint in the wind, gray days, hammer effect paint, jason derusha, minnesota more rain than seattle, spray paint, spray painting a door, storms in the dakotas, two winters in minnesota, wcco news, weather radar

It was difficult to get motivated yesterday. We’re in another period of gray days. Rain is threatening; the humidity is up. Jason DeRusha of WCCO News mentioned the other night that we’ve had more rain for this time of year than Seattle. However, he pointed out, Seattle is not in its rainy season. That happens during our winter. He was trying to keep us from being too smug about the rainfall, but I’m going to be smug anyway because combining our past winter of snow damn near every day with our spring and summer of rain damn near every day means that we have combined a Minnesota winter with a Seattle winter, so we’ve had winter twice. So there.

Anyway …

We had trouble getting motivated yesterday. What better time to repaint the front door?

The door was a lovely shade of orange-red, which we really liked, but it was getting dinged and when we went to look for the same paint color, we weren’t able to find it. Instead, we thought we’d go a little crazy and try a hammered copper spray paint. We bought two cans, figuring that the orange-red would make a nice base coat to the copper.

The orange-red front door, June 26, 2011.

It was on-and-off gray yesterday, too, so before we started, Erik checked weather radar online. The storms were well over the Dakotas and would take hours to get here. Perfect. We ought to have enough time to paint a door.

We taped off the window and edges using painter’s tape and newspaper and removed the door from its hinges. I had saw horses outside, ready to receive the door. Immediately, we noticed a problem. It was too windy. Yeah, thanks, weather radar. Why didn’t you remind us to check for wind? (It’s not like we should be bright enough to check for that ourselves.)

With the help of Eldest Son, we moved the door and saw horses around to the north side of the house, which kept us out of most of the wind. Then, we started painting.

The first coat went on smoothly, too smoothly. We had a lovely flat copper color, but there was no hammer effect. We tried again, another coat, thicker than the first, with the paint can held closer to the door. (The can recommends 12 inches. By the time we were done, we began to believe this number was missing a decimal – 1.2 inches was more like it.) Still, the copper was mostly flat, with a few patches of hammer effect. Erik was not pleased. The door looked blotchy.

We finished the two cans we had and decided we needed more. While I was at the store purchasing three more cans, Erik went online to see if there was some trick to getting the hammer effect to work. Apparently, it works beautifully on small projects, but door-sized expanses were obviously another story. Online advice also suggested putting on thicker coats from the get-go, rather than several lighter coats. Okay, heavier coats. We can do that.

We tackled the door again with our three additional cans of paint, making smaller stroking motions as we sprayed and holding the nozzle fairly close to the surface of the door (that 1.2 inches I mentioned before). We had better luck with the hammer effect with this technique, ending up with a door that has some interesting texture and flame-like strokes. It also has a LOT of paint on it, so it ought to stand up better against the elements.

Here’s the result:

The newly painted copper front door, June 26, 2011.

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