Door to Door: Choosing the Color!

Front entry to the house.

As they say in the farming industry, you gotta make hay while the sun shines. Well, that also applies to most exterior work on your home when you live in New England!

One of the first areas of improvement that we knew had to be started ASAP is the front steps and exterior doors. The home has two main points of entry, and the reality is that the front door will be used far less than the side door at the end of the driveway. However, it still needs some sprucing up, and it seriously lacks curb appeal. Besides working on the staircase and repairing the lattice, One of the quickest and easiest things we can do is to put some paint on the door. Lucky for us the condition of the door is excellent, and it's in "primed" condition. Which means, it's been primed by the manufacturer and the previous owner NEVER put any color on it. The side door is the same! I followed my standard protocol and grabbed about 20 color chips from the paint store. Then, as a family, we slowly narrowed them down to these 3 from Benjamin Moore:

The next step was to go back to the hardware store and get some paint swatches. Those tiny little chips they give you are hardly enough to really be able to see what the color will look like. And since I knew I didn't have time today to get the entire project done, I decided to paint the swatches on the side door that is not visible from the street.

Our top 3 choices painted as swatches on the back door.

This is also an excellent way to see how they look with the color of the siding, since this door has the yellow siding a little closer to it than the front door does. It's also easier to view this door from a distance and see the entire thing without the visual obstruction of the porch. So we all took a step back to look at them as well.

Rear side entry to the house.

It's amazing how different they can look depending on the light! But we landed on one that all four of us agree upon. And the winner is....Weeping Willow! (That's the middle swatch.) Stay tuned to see it actually painted on the door. As I said in the beginning, I'm at the mercy of mother nature. I won't be painting doors on rainy or cold days. So, that considerably diminishes my opportunities up here in New England! We have lots of exciting curb appeal and outdoor projects lined up for this home. We can't wait to share more with you!