Painted Front Door

It has been FOREVER since my last post!  I started working on a night project with my work at the end of July, and I don't get home from work before 9 PM two nights of the week, so it's really hurting my daily routines and ability to do much blogging.  The project ends at the end of January, so I'm counting down the days!

I do feel like we have been pretty productive around the house here in the last few weeks finishing up some projects and starting some new ones, so I have some things to tell you about.

Since the last post was on the yard, I'll first start with our fun and crazy new front door color!

It sure is bright!  I love it during the day when the sun is out, but it looks a little strange in the evenings when it's lit by the porch light.  Let's just say we're still getting used to it, but it's only been a week.  I was hoping the trick-or-treaters would have complimented me on my fine work, but they only said how much they loved our dog.  Abby always steals the attention.  Oh well...

So, if you're interested in painting your front door, then here is the steps that I followed.  I didn't go through much prep work, but this worked for me.

1. Buy a paint color in a glossy finish.  Most front doors are glossy, and it's more durable.  Some suggested to buy a sample first and paint it on there and see the color in the sun.  I picked out our color to match the yellow-green bushes in the front yard.  It's called "Lemon Grass" by Behr.

2. Wipe down your front door and knock off any loose paint with a light sand.  The wood by our front door is not in the best of shape, but we'll do something about that in the future.  I did my best to sand down the old paint that was flaking away at the bottom and then gave it a good cleaning.

3. Tape off any glass or edges that you want.  I only taped off the glass, but I probably should have taped off the edges of the door since our door is a off-white color on the inside.  I kept having to wipe the edge and just be extra careful.  Some suggest to tape off the bottom of the door as well to catch any drips.  You'll definitely want to keep a wet rag by you.

4.  Now you get to paint!  I was going to use a foam roller, but it just didn't put enough paint on the door and kept taking the paint off when I rolled over it again, so I went back to a brush.  I started with the sides.  Before they were brown, but I thought the green would be a bit overkill if it was on the sides as well.  Luckily, I found the paint to the exterior trim color in our basement so I didn't have to buy new.

5.  For the main door, there is a pattern that I followed.  I started with the creases first, then painted the faces of the insets, then the verticals between them, then the horizontals, then the verticals on the outside.  This worked well and followed the little bit of pattern that the door has.

First coat down, and 1 more to go!

6.  Then, I did a second coat over everything, and touched up a few spots and it was done!  Our door was wood, so the internal temperature wasn't too hot, well, and it was on a 65 degree day in October, but my mom always said not to do the door on a really hot day because the paint may bubble up.  It did dry pretty fast after I went over it, so you have to be careful of drips.  Even though I used a brush, I don't notice any really bad brush lines.  Some websites will say to sand down the door or use Kilz to make the paint adhere better or so that the first coat doesn't shine through, but I didn't have any trouble, and 2 coats seemed to cover fine.

 So, it's a little bright, but it's a nice change and it only look 4 hours or so to do, so I'll probably switch it up again next year.