"Wood" garage doors

So, for those of you who've never seen it, here's a picture of how hideous our house was when we bought it. Someone actually chose that paint color combination....wow. Even through the total mess it was, we still saw potential & were so happy to be buying our first house. My Dad arranged for a painter to show up (as a total surprise to us) one day & told us to pick out a color for the house. The best house warming gift ever! I had been painting different swatches of mossy green all over the house but at the last minute changed my mind & went with a terra-cotta because I thought it was closer to the Mediterranean look we were going for. Needless to say the 80's powdery blue garage doors weren't gonna be able to hang with the new colors we chose. I always imagined that whenever I was able to buy my own house it I would have a rich dark wooden garage door put in.......have you ever priced those things?! You could easily spend thousands of dollars just for a "basic" style, that's not to mention the maintenance & upkeep involved. So I did what I've done with pretty much everything else in our house, I figured out a "poor girls" version of what I really wanted but couldn't afford. After about a month of driving through all the "dream house neighborhoods" in town looking for ideas I came up with the look I wanted & figured out how to replicate it.

I started by having our painter spray the garage door the same color as the stucco. I figured that because I was planning on going with such a dark stain that I would need a rich warm color as my base coat. This picture shows the top three panels of the door completed & the bottom panel with the original base color.

Here's a view a little closer up to show the "wood grain" finish. Because I was going for more of a a rustic look I varied the stain application quite a bit so that there were darker & lighter sections. I think it makes it look more like natural wood.

This shot doesn't show as much detail but it gives a good idea of the contrast between the terra-cotta paint & the walnut stain. The terra-cotta color was a custom blended color based on one of Lowes Valspar colors I think it was called Rustic Oak in a flat exterior finish. The stain was Varethane's Walnut. By the way, the bottom panel of the door is finished now.