how I made my house smile

In case you missed yesterday's post, let me fill you in.  I painted my door blue.  And it was a lot of fun. So this is the post about how I went :

The red door was a piece of work.  The seller painted it in a hurry... and then closed it.  So along the edges I was dealing with this:

So I busted out the sander that my grandfather sent down here with my grandmother last week.  Some people recommended sanding the whole door  down if the paint is glossy at all, so I went ahead and lightly roughed up the existing paint all over the door.

While removing some of the old paint, I discovered that not only did they paint the door with the hardware on, but they also spray painted the hardware while attached to the door before painting the door red.  I took off all of the hardware before I painted.  I wanted a little cleaner look than what they had left me with.

So everything came off with a little wiggling and pushing and went into cardboard.

Before spray painting everything, I also sanded everything by hand then wiped the dust off.  It gives the paint a better (less slick) surface to grab onto. Something the last person didn't do to the handle... after only being painted a few months it was already scratching off.

I used Rust-Oleum for the hardware paint job which gave a great fine mist with an easier to deal with trigger style handle than the Krylon had.  I made several swipes with the spray on each object, waiting a few minutes between coats.  Thin coats and constant  movement helped eliminate pooling or dripping.

I painted the hardware in-between coats of paint.  I used "Sherry Petersik's method" of starting with the raised panel accents, the panel frames, and then going in the direction of the wood on the major parts of the door.  Like Sherry, I also used a 2in angled brush to do the whole thing.  You can also use a foam roller, but I love the control in the edges I have with the brush and am more comfortable using it for the whole thing than switching.  Less clean up too.

With how dark the door was, I did 2 good coats of the Valspar Duramax paint, letting it dry for about 2 hours between coats.  It could have been less time in-between but I chose to eat lunch and spray hardware and an owl :).

I think after I finished the layers (sorry I forgot to do a in-progress shot...) I waited about 2 more hours before I put the hardware on and another 2 hours before I closed the door.

I'm so happy with how this project turned out and glad I chose to paint the inside knobs as well.

One last look of my happy door :