Door Story

My house has three doors, but the one that opens directly into my kitchen has been universally approved for entry. Family, friends, even Fed Ex uses it. This makes for some issues, like a kitchen floor that always needs mopping. When it became clear over the years that all and sundry would ignore my pretty front porch and inviting entryway, I learned to deal. Mostly. One of the major irritants remained the position of the refrigerator, which was adjacent to the beloved door. Anyone who opened the door smacked into the backside of anyone who happened to be at the fridge. Since I'm the cook, and I also eat a lot, the person being bumped on the rump was usually me.

I eventually solved the problem by purchasing a beautiful new door that opened OUT not IN. Thrilled with my new door, I had it painted a deep raspberry color to match my counter tops. Sadly, after several years, the door started to look speckled. Paint flaked and chipped. My door was in need of a makeover. I decided to do it myself. How hard could it be? I'd painted the interior of every room in my house many times. This was just a door.

 

After deciding on a special faux finish technique called "aging" I headed over to the local DYI, where I watched a video on the process, spoke to a teenaged salesperson about materials, and snagged a free brochure outlining the procedure step by step. I also bought paint, glaze, and a special brush called a fitch tool. After reading the instructions approximately six times, I decided to practice on an old table first. It turned out fabulous!

So I taped off wood molding and brass locks and put the first coat of paint on the door. The light lemony color barely concealed the raspberry underneath. I waited four hours before rolling on another coat of base paint. While that dried, I decided to run out to get my mail. Except the door wouldn't open. I'd painted it shut.

Later, my husband Al opened the door with a fierce tug that also tore a big chunk of paint off the edge. The next day I sanded and touched that up.  Dark is always difficult to color with light, as I knew from the turquoise to ivory experience of 1997, so the following day I gave my door one last coat of base. It looked pretty good. I wish I'd stopped there, but no. I had a can of glaze and a fitch tool and I was going to use them.

I applied the glaze exactly as I had on the table. Exactly as Ralph Lauren had instructed. It looked like hell. The glaze blobbed where it should have streaked. It sat darkly where it should have laid lightly. It looked like a little kid had gotten loose with a bar of melting chocolate and smeared it everywhere. Except this stuff couldn't be washed off. In seconds it dries to a permanent stain. Every time I tried to fix a bad spot, I made it worse.

My door looked nothing like the table I'd experimented on. It looked more like the door to Davy Jones's locker. I felt like my kitchen had suddenly become a quaint olde tavern frequented by pirates who used the door to wipe their muddy mitts. In short, my door was a disaster.

I held out some slim hope that perhaps it would grow on me. That Al would come home and say "Not too bad," like he does when I experiment with tofu. Sadly, when he saw the door, Al's face wore a mask of faux fright. Al never makes that face. Not even the time I made Tofu Stroganoff.

With the best of intentions, I had managed an impossible feat. I had, with the help of a door and Ralph Lauren, kicked my own butt.

An Original 50-Something Moms Blog post. Cynthia Harrison has been keeping A Writer's Diary since 2002.