Home Remodeling - 3/13 - The Idea Room

How to paint a door

Recently I shared with you our updated porch as part of the Lowes Creative Blogger “curb appeal” challenge. As part of it, I finally had the courage to paint my door black, which I have wanted to do for a long time now. Today I would like to share with you and show you… how to paint a door. Several of you had questions about the paint and the tools we used so I am going to try and answer all of them here.

First off, I wanted to share a before picture with you so you can see the door before and after painting. And yes…that is a Christmas wreath on my door…in May…(don’t judge…hehe)!

My husband and I took a little trip to our Local Lowes store and talked to their paint department about the best paint for our front door. With their recommendations we decided to go with an oil base paint for better durability and overall finish. We chose the Rust-Olem brand in a satin black finish.

They also told us about Penetrol by Flood, which you can add to your paint which helps the paint not to dry so quickly which can help eliminate brush and roller marks. This was really important to me as I wanted a nice smooth finish which can be hard sometimes when using a brush and a roller. You could choose to spray your door with a paint sprayer but we don’t have one so that was not an option for us.

Let’s get started:

1. Wipe down door and wipe off any grease marks or stains.

2. Remove the door hardware. This is optional, but your painting will be easier without them. We took ours off since we were replacing our 35 year old hardware. Think about drying time if you are removing your door hardware though as your house will be unsecured when the door handle is off and when you can put your hardware back on.

3. Lightly sand over surface of the door and prime if the door has any imperfections or areas that may need some attention. Also you will need to do this if you are painting latex paint over an oil base or vice versa.

4. Tape off any areas you don’t want to get paint on like door hinges, windows, trim and door hardware.

5. Use good paint tools. We love the Quali-Tech Ultra Smooth High Density Foam roller and the angled Purdy paint brushes. I used the 2 inch size for my door.

6. When you start the actual painting with the primer (if you are priming) and the paint, be sure to paint the door panels in the proper direction. This will help with the overall smoothness in the final painted finish.

7. I start painting the inside of the panels shown here in the red and the #1. Paint in a circle in the direction of the arrows with your paint brush. Be sure to paint slowly and watch for drips which can happen easily in these sections…especially the corners. Then move on to the next panel until all the insides of the panels (the squares and rectangles) have been painted.

8. Now quickly move on to painting the raised panels and the middle stripe of the door in blue marked with the #2. I use the roller for these flat sections. Roll them smoothly and make sure that where you end and pick up the roller that there is not a big thick line of paint. Be sure to lightly roll this out so that there will not be a noticeable line when finished.

9. Now roll the area horizontally between the top and bottom panels. Be sure to following the direction of the arrows for the green section marked #3.

How To Paint a Door

10. Now for the final section, you will need to paint around the entire outside of the door following the yellow arrows marked with a #4. Be sure to paint vertically on the outside left and right sides and then horizontally on the top and bottom areas.

Your door will need to dry completely in between painting your different coats of paint. We needed a total of three coats of paint for it to be the nice finish we had been wanting. I made sure to paint the door when I could spend all day at home for a couple of days. I painted the door first thing in the morning so that it had time to dry all day long before putting the dead bolt back on at night so we could lock it up.

Then we added the finishing touches with some nice new hardware from Lowe’s which included the new dead bolt and door handle and a matching kick plate. I LOVE the extra touch the silver kick plate added to the overall look, plus it covered up some dings and dents that were in the bottom of our door.

I threw on some house numbers which I cut with my Silhouette CAMEO to finish it off.

And…I finally put away the Christmas wreath. I figured it was probably about time…don’t you? Ha! I whipped up this other wreath with some stuff I already had on hand and will share with you how I did that in a later post.

I feel like the color of someone’s front door can tell a lot about their personality. What about you? What color is your front door? Is it the color you want it to be? If you could paint it any color you wanted, what color would you paint your front door?

June 14, 2012 · Filed under: DIY Tutorials, Home Decor, Home Remodeling, Tutorials Tagged with DIY painted front door, how do I paint a door, how to paint your front door, paint for exterior door, painted black front door, painted door tutorial, painting your door, tips for painting front door

pantry update

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Summer has hit and I always feel like there is an adjustment period when the kids are home all day again for both moms and the kids. We are trying to set up a good routine that includes chores in the morning followed by fun. Some are more on board with this than others. Does this happen at your house too? Ha!

While we try to get that all figured out over here I thought I would finally share with you our freshly updated pantry. As you know we have been remodeling our kitchen for the last few months along with the office. We still have some projects left but are getting so close. Life and kids activities have slowed us down quite a bit but there is light at the end of the tunnel. Hoping to start sharing more of it here soon.

One thing we did finish up is the pantry. We didn’t do much to it other than wallpaper it with this Allen + Roth paintable wallpaper which we bought from Lowe’s.

This wallpaper went up pretty easily and I had just barely enough to fill my space.

In fact, I had on little strip left on the inside edge of the closet. I was able to piece the last few pieces out of the scraps without having to buy a whole new roll of paper. Phew!

I was planning on painting the wallpaper a nice grey color, but after the paper was up, I loved the original color so much with my new blue kitchen walls, that I decided NOT to paint it. That could still change in the future (if you know me and my propensity for change)!!

I have a love for pretty labels and added some more to go with the few that I already had in the pantry. They make everything feel happy and in place for me. Did I mention that I have some OCD issues?

We then put the closet doors back on, which we had removed during the kitchen renovation when the wood floor was laid. This whole process has been really drawn out which happens when you end up doing most of the work yourself, but it has been fun to see the transformation.

Now I need to go and get the troops moving on their chores and finally clean up my bedroom that looks like a tornado hit! Just trying to keep it real. At least my pantry looks pretty :)!

June 7, 2012 · Filed under: Home Decor, Home Remodeling, Organization Tips Tagged with Home Tour--Kitchen, labels, organization tips, pantry, pantry organization

Lowe’s “curb appeal” challenge & giveaway

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This Giveaway is now CLOSED!!

This month, as one of Lowe’s Creative Bloggers, I was given the challenge of spicing up the “curb appeal” of my home. I was a little bit more excited about this challenge than I should have been.

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The front of my house needed some serious attention. It is not that I didn’t want to work on making it nicer…it just that it was a fairly big undertaking and we always had more pressing items on the to do list.

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The bushes in the front of our house and the sides of the front porch were overgrown and needed to be removed. In December, we had a huge windstorm with winds over 100 mph. The wind blew from the East and both of these bushes sustained permanent damage on the East sides. All the vegetation had been completely stripped from them. It was time for them to go for good.

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And those decorative trees? Well they both were also pretty badly beat up. One was completely broken in half…which is why it is leaning up on the brick wall. The potted plants? Well…both of those got blown right out of the pots. We had replanted them hoping they would survive…but as you can see…they didn’t fare too well. And…how do you manage to have a plant that is dead on one side and not the other? Ha!

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So this “curb appeal” was JUST the motivation I needed to get this area fancied up. We got to work ripping out the two main bushes and a couple of smaller ones as well. Then we bought some plants and flowers to add some much needed color and texture to the front of our home.

And…I FINALLY got the nerve up to paint my front door black! Can I get a holler? I have always LOVED black front doors. We bought some new door hardware from Lowe’s which made a huge difference in the overall look of the finished front porch area. I will be sure to share some things I learned and the products I used for painting the front door.

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We also picked up these nice chairs from Lowe’s so we can sit on our front porch at night and enjoy the nice Summer Evenings we get here. This is also where we come and enjoy a good summer afternoon rainstorm.

I am really happy with how the whole look of the front of my home has changed. It was quite a bit of work…but it really needed to be done. And guess what? Lowe’s want to help one of you update your curb appeal.

Want to win $100 in the form of a Lowe’s Gift Card? I thought you might! What do you have to do? Simply follow the directions below…

To Enter:

Leave a comment, on this post, telling me what “curb appeal” project you’d tackle with $100 from Lowe’s.

That’s it folks!! Can’t get any easier than that can it?

*This giveaway is open to US residents age 18 and over only. Contest closes on Tuesday, June 5 at noon MST. Winner will be chosen via Random.org and will have 48 hours to respond or a new winner will be chosen.