Roblog

We got a letter in the mail a few weeks ago advising us that we need to paint our garage door the same color as our house to remain in compliance with our neighborhood's deed restrictions. This is amusing for two reasons:

1. Our garage door is white, and our primary house color is Navajo White
2. The day after we got this letter, our brick planter in our front yard fell apart, causing much more of an eyesore than our too-white garage door

Generally I am fine with having an active deed restriction enforcement policy. I understand the rationale, and I did agree to abide by it when I moved into the neighborhood. But the deed restrictions do not say that the garage must be painted the same color as the house. There is a reference to "house painting that is inconsistent with the color schemes predominant in the neighborhood" being prohibited. It just seems to me that this is not a serious enough issue to warrant a deed restriction violation report.

So, partly to indulge my creative side, and partly to be a rebel and stick it to the man, I am not painting the entire garage door Navajo White. Instead, I'm going to carefully paint the areas between the garage door panels and the interior part of the panels Navajo White. The depressed areas (what I call the "trim") I'll leave unpainted (white).

I've completed the top and bottom rows of the garage door using this method already, and I must say I really like how it's turning out. Donna would prefer I just paint the whole thing Navajo White (it certainly would be faster that way), partly because she thinks this will not be sufficient to ward off a second deed restriction letter. Indeed, as we drive around the neighborhood, I am unable to find a single garage that has more than one color on the door. We'll see what happens.