Q & A – Blue Bedroom Door & Pine Tar Front Porch Update

I didn’t get far enough on the storage room to share an update today, so instead, I thought I would answer a couple of questions that have been recurring over the last couple of weeks. First up, several people have wondered what it would look like if I paint the exterior bedroom the dark blue shutter color, so I took a few minutes to do a quick mockup so that we can see if this is an option. I also added some steps in front of the door, but I just copied and pasted the steps from the front porch, so the real steps won’t look exactly like this. At least we can get a general idea, though.

Here’s what the front of the house looks like right now with the bedroom door white…

And here’s the mockup with the bedroom door the same dark blue as the shutters…

I’ll admit that it sounded like a crazy idea to me, but I kind of like it. The only thing I don’t like is that my windows with shutters have lots of white trim showing, and the door is just all blue with no white. I guess I could try painting the main part of the door dark blue and leaving the inner grid around the glass panes white. That might be more consistent with the windows and shutters. It might look something like this…

What I had in mind was just using some big, blue planters to bring the blue to that end of the house. That would look something like this, but you’ll have to ignore the planters that I copied and pasted from the front porch…

I still don’t know. I’m not sold on either idea. It might require some trial and error to find the right idea.

The second question I’ve gotten a few times is about the pine tar on the front porch.

I finished the pine tar on the cedar front porch about ten days ago, and so far, it only has one coat on it. At some point, I will need to add a second coat, and then next year, I’ll probably need to add a third and final coat. I read that each coat would take 72 hours to dry, so I blocked off the porch so that no one would walk on it for three days. After that, I tried to be very careful when I walked on it.

The first day I walked on it after giving it three days to dry, I did notice the slightest bit of tackiness to the finish. It was very slight, and I would imagine that most people wouldn’t even notice it. I noticed it because I was hyper fixated on it. But even with that tiny bit of tackiness, I wasn’t transferring the color to any other surface like the floor inside my door or the concrete on the sidewalk. And nothing from the bottom of my shoes was sticking to the porch. I did notice dirt from my shoes tracked onto the porch, but it wasn’t sticking to the porch.

After that first day of walking on it, the tackiness went away completely, and it seemed to be completely dry. So if I had to do it again, I would probably block off the porch for four days instead of three just to give it that one extra day for all of the tackiness to go away before walking on it. But other than that, it has been fantastic! I still love the deep, consistent color, and I’m very anxious to see how it will wear over the next year.

I think the time that it takes to dry is completely dependent on the climate. I did the pine tar on my porch during some really hot and dry days. The temperature was at or above 100 degrees during those days that it was drying and curing, so I think that helped to speed up the process. So if you’re considering pine tar and linseed oil, just keep in mind that linseed oil is a very slow drying, slow curing oil, and if you don’t have the hot, dry weather to speed up that process, it might take a lot longer for it to cure.

But so far, so good! I know it’s only been ten days, and it’s hard to recommend a product when I haven’t had more time to see how it’s going to stand up to the elements over time. And again, I do still need to do a second coat, and I’d like to do that during the month of August so that the hot, dry weather will speed up the curing process. But once that’s done, I’ll keep y’all updated on how it holds up to the weather here in central Texas.

Addicted 2 Decorating is where I share my DIY and decorating journey as I remodel and decorate the 1948 fixer upper that my husband, Matt, and I bought in 2013. Matt has M.S. and is unable to do physical work, so I do the majority of the work on the house by myself. You can learn more about me here.