Learning from my mistakes

Hello folks! What a week we've been having. This past week was already busy in our little world due to me taking a week-long out-of-state class. And then the world seemed to just fall apart this week. It was ridiculous and so terribly sad how many horrible things happened this week. So, I hope this post brings a little bit of happiness in the way of humor. See, it's another post where we get to laugh at my mistakes (and hopefully learn from my errors).

It started when a scratch on our front door turned into a bigger scratch. And then the peeling just got out of control. Do you remember when I painted the front door back in January? Well, there was a few things I didn't do right.
1. I did not properly prepare the door. By this, I mean sanding (or roughing up the door surface) and priming.
2. I did not paint during optimal weather conditions. It was cold.
3. I am not a huge fan of the paint I chose. However, that could have been overcome by preparation work.

So, instead, I made much more work for myself. The first step was to peel off the paint.

The majority of it came off in these big sheets. It was so weird.

Underneath, the old paint was perfectly preserved.

But then, there were some paint spots that had actually properly adhered to the door. Except, since I was stripping everything down, this situation was not optimal. So, for many days, our front door was in some form of disarray. J started joking that it looked like we lived in a ghetto house with a door looking like this.

Eventually, through a combination of sanding and scraping, I got the remainder of the paint off the door. I gave the door a thorough sanding after that, and wiped it down with a damp rag. Once it was dry, it was ready to be primed. I used Kilz primer on the whole thing (2 coats).

I then painted 3 coats of the paint (Benjamin exterior paint) on the door. I tested it and everything, and it seems to have adhered very well to the door. I think I like Sherwin Williams paint a little better than Benjamin Moore, especially for trim and doors. Our interior paint by Sherwin Williams for our trim is awesome. The Benjamin Moore type seemed too thin or something.

Final result.

I know, it looks the same. But, it's not peeling off the door, so that's a huge improvement. I just won't think about how many hours I wasted by not properly preparing my surface. It was a lot. But, I won't make the same mistake next time for sure.