The Greenway Project: I See a Red Door and I Want it Painted Black

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

I See a Red Door and I Want it Painted Black

With apologies to the Rolling Stones, it was actually fake plastic wood doors throughout my condo that I wanted banished from my world. With all due respect, not even Mick and the boys could make these doors look cool. Here's what they looked like before (please note that I did not pick this paint colour - it was existing):

Here's a close-up just in case you couldn't live without a close-up view of fake wood grain:

Gorgeous. Not.

So I considered replacing them all with something like these from the Home Depot:

But the odd-sized doors in our 70s condo precluded that that could happen easily. The DIY-er in me jumped to attention and I realized I could paint them. Now I have (mostly) lived in older and cottage-style homes so I have always painted my trim in a soft cream. I absolutely love the look of large moldings painted out white. But I also realized our new home, with its flat-paneled doors and tiny trimwork wouldn't suit that look.

Luckily, my son, The Creative One, unwittingly came to the rescue. He decided he wanted to paint his chest of drawers. He's a young guy, so can you guess what colour he picked??? You're right! He picked black! Lightning bolt! I could ALSO paint my doors black!
So we headed down to my favourite Benjamin Moore retailer; you can find them here.
They were extremely helpful and offered us their Aura paint because it is self-priming and has low VOCs which is good for the environment. It also will cover ANYTHING. The clerk even called the Benjamin Moore 1-800 number to make sure I could paint my plastic doors WITHOUT priming them first. She's a star! And, it turns out, I could!

So, The Creative One liked the colour called "Onyx" (BM2133-10). We decided on a semi-gloss. Despite the name, the colour is actually a deep gray/black with a lot of depth. And now my doors look like this: