Wendy and I have has an ongoing debate in our house that we need you to settle for us. The options are simple: "covered up" or "au natural," but the decision has our house divided.
It's an age old question that plagues home owners day and night, and more specifically, our home's doorstop. To paint or to not paint, that is the question. Please allow me to introduce the conundrum of the day and to present both sides of the facts that may ultimately sway your decision. At the conclusion of this post, we ask that you weigh in to help us tip the scales of justice in the appropriate direction.
After we completed our vestibule reconfiguration and front door restoration project, we allowed a final detail to go unfinished for nearly a full year. We needed an interior baseboard door stop for our front door that would be both functional and aesthetic. Unfortunately for us, we weren't sure just what we wanted it to look like. I knew I wanted something that would look like it had always been there and had successfully stood the test of time, while Wendy wanted a doorstop that was unobtrusive and was not "hideous." We all know the standard style door stops that we often see in homes, and we both knew we were not interested in this look or style for our 1880s Victorian.
After extensive online research, time spent in antique stores and architectural salvage yards, and an exhaustive amount of time spent looking at door stops in homes for sale or on period TV shows and movies, we finally settled on the classic and accurate look for our Victorian front door. We decided it would be best to stick to the roots of what our home probably originally contained, in this case, a turned wood doorstop with hard rubber tip (like this one).
Over the years I had seen many on eBay while I hunted endlessly for antique rim locks and other door hardware, so I returned to the auction giant to search for the perfect doorstop. I came across everything from the beautifully restored and extremely expensive, to the downright disgusting and broken.
To satisfy our needs, I wanted to find a doorstop that was in good shape, not broken, chipped, or cracked, and still possessed the original rear mounting screw fully intact and functional. After a bit more searching I found a winner. This paint covered and completely dirty antique doorstop was in need of a little TLC to bring it back to what it could and should be. When it arrived I knew just what I needed to do.
I covered the doorstop with SmartStrip paint stripper and PeelAway paper (essentially wax paper) and let it sit overnight. The next day we had a mess but also had taken a step in the right direction.
If you remember this little doorstop project, it was during our manic "OMG, let's get everything possible done before the Christmas home tour!!!" phase last November/December, so we had our hands pretty full and were juggling several small projects at once. After removing the paint I used a little bit of Bix stripper to clean up the more intricate details on be doorstop.
Following more intricate work on the details, the stop's wood was really looking great. It was in wonderful shape, had no cracks or areas that needed to be patched, and it seemed like it would do the job nicely. Even the hard stop tip was in relatively good shape. Everything just needed a final sanding with some steel wool before I applied the finish coat.
To finish the doorstop, since the wood looked great, and we were pressed for time, we opted to simply apply several coats of shellac. This really made the rich color of the old growth wood pop, but it's the catalyst for our ongoing debate.
When I installed the stop it was easy to determine where it should go. The original door configuration was the same as our new set up, so there was already a hole and stop location clearly visible.
I just threaded this new stop into the old location and took a step back to admire our once-and-for-all finished project.
That's when Wendy piped up and said, "It seems like it works, but are we going to leave it unpainted? It looks like a giant boob sticking off of the baseboard." Incredulously I responded in a simply flabbergasted tone, "Yes! Unpainted...more like untainted." (I'm super clever like that.) It was beautiful in my eyes, perfect, better than I could have imagined, definitely not boob-like. Why would we want to paint it?
Due to our time crunch surrounding the home tour Wendy allowed the doorstop to remain untainted er, unpainted, in its installed location, but she's been tiring of this look lately and is once again beginning to put the pressure on me to "finish" this item once and for all with a coat of our baseboard paint.
From my perspective, it's rather simple. I like painting stuff as much as the next guy, but I also don't want to be a "cool, let's paint it!" kind of guy. But in this case, I think it's just wrong to apply paint. Sure, it's mounted directly to the white baseboard, but the majority of the time I'll be looking at this doorstop from the top of the stairs as I walk down. From this view the baseboard is not the backdrop of the view, but rather the wood floors are the backdrop. The shellac covered doorstop actually resembles the wood floors almost perfectly and allows the doorstop to more or less blend into its surroundings. I worry that painting the doorstop will work against this approach and will actually make it show up in a much more prevalent manner. Not to mention that leaving it unpainted is also more historically accurate.
Wendy, on the other hand, has her "boob" argument. More specifically, the fact that this "ugly" looking wood doorstop resembles a bare boob protruding from our otherwise nice baseboard molding.
Now we need your help. What's your vote. Do we keep it au natural, embracing the beauty of the wood and its ability to blend into the backdrop when we see it while walking down the stairs? Or do you think we should cover that boob in a coat of glossy white (leaving the black tip will stay unpainted)? We want you to choose sides and explain where your allegiances lie.
