yeah, you heard me. i was wrong.
my husband was right.
it happens...
it all started a few months ago with a you tube video. we had been talking about painting our front door, but jeremy really wanted a stained wooden door, something we couldn't really afford. i took off that day for a few hours and came home to find my husband covered in dark brown stain. he was wearing a sad little face and looked exhausted. i prepared myself for the worst.
as he showed me the door, my internal critic went berzerk. the stain itself didn't look so bad. the color was great. he had tried to put a faux wood grain look into it (hence, the you tube video), and it wasn't awful either. but there had been some trouble getting things the way he wanted it...so there were layers and layers of thick gel stain. additionally, he had left the hardware on the door while he painted, so that had gel stain all over it too.
of course i didn't say all of this out loud. i think i actually said something worse. i'm sorry to say that my mouth got the better of me, and before i could recover from the fumes, i had hurt my sweet husband's feelings badly. he had worked so hard. we didn't speak for a couple of days, and then one glorious afternoon, he offered an olive branch: "wanna go to home depot and look for a new door?"
bless him. we found a door we liked but didn't really want to spend the money. on a lark, we decided to stop by the paint desk just to see if they had any suggestions for fixing what had happened during "the door incident". dan the man was working that day, the best painter ever to work at home depot, i'm sure. we showed him a picture of the door. he shook his head and started tsk, tsk-ing. as he led us down the aisle to our foreseeable doom, he started getting very excited. "here's what you're gonna do...you're gonna take this door outside, NOT IN THE HOUSE CAUSE THIS STUFF IS TOXIC, TOXIC!!, and you're gonna get you some sandpaper and you're gonna sand the $%&# out of this door. then you're gonna wipe it down and then sand the $%&# outta it again. and after you've wiped it down, sand the $%&# out of it again." i'm not exaggerating. this is verbatim. we were silent, in semi-shock, trying not to laugh, scared to death of what dan would do if we did! after about 20min. of instruction, we politely thanked him and scurried away. one look later, we dissolved into a fit of giggles and decided there was no way we were doing all that sanding. we went home to think on it and save up some money.
fast forward to now. it's been a few months, and the door is finally dry. the more i live with it, the less i hate it. in fact, i actually kind of like it now. it's grown on me. we took the hardware off yesterday and gave it all a good coat of oiled bronze spray paint. jeremy put it all back on today, and i have to say, it looks really good. like...really good!
so...i was wrong. and he was right. and i'm glad.
