Dh just came home & I asked him. This is my layman's version. Red paint is mostly colorant and so has less base paint in it and takes more to get a good cover. If you used 3 thick coats, it is probably just that, too thick & needs more cure time. On the spots not sticking, he said if they are truly not adhering, you have a problem and you should either scrape, strip or sand those spots until you get down to something solid, smooth the whole door & start over. If it's sticky, it will gum up the sandpaper, but can be done. Then, if you are using a neutral base paint, use a gray base primer and it will be easier to cover. What is the specific paint you were using, i.e. brand, type (acrylic latex, etc). He suggests you go back over it with an acrylic latex and you'll be fine.

Don't give up, mahlgold! If you look at the boxed out lower windows, the trim on the sides and bottom of the windows is stepped back from the upper piece - there's a name for that piece and it escapes me at the moment - anyway, it creates a very nice shadow line. That's really key - shadow lines are wonderful at adding depth and interest. As for the shutters, if you have more substantial trim, properly placed shutters would sit so that they are at the window edge, basically covering most of the side trim - and I can hear you saying 'then why add the trim???' Because it will show a bit from certain angles and the look it creates is not something you can fudge. If it's not there the shutters would be sitting flat on the house (as they are now) not angled back a bit. In an ideal world the shutter size would be so that if they were closed, they would meet in the middle of the window. In the real world, we can't always do that, but we get as close as possible and let the eye imagery do the rest. If you get reasonably close to half window width, it will look fine. I think a black door would look wonderful with Fairview Taupe or any of the earthy historic colors. However.....with your recessed door you might lose some of the detail and it might look like a hole. I love your brass handset - maybe consider a larger, more important looking door knocker as another way to brighten a black door. And if your handset is the forever brass that doesn't tarnish, make sure your door knocker is the same.

I don't have an answer for you but suggestions of how you might work to an answer. Some paint manufacturers have an app on their website where one can upload a picture of their house and try out different colors. When I tried this before it didn't work perfectly so that I ended up with a gorgeous finish rendering, but it worked enough to get me in the ballpark of understanding what a given color would look like on the house. If the mfg. you're using doesn't have such an app, use another manufactures as if you're working with generic colors. Even if you can't buy samples of the actual product, you could have sample paints mixed up to replicate the same finish colors very inexpensively, and do sample boards that you can view in front of your house, from a distance. I do a lot of visualizing using MS Paint and would experiment with it. If you could get a sample of the applied color that is large enough to see in a photo of your house, you could use the tools in Paint to replicate and hand draw that color into the areas in question. If you place the sample color in front of your house and photograph it with the same camera that you photograph the house with, that would be one way of getting it so that you could use it in Paint.

Here are some house styles I like... Ours is obviously smaller and we have less money than the people in these houses!