Front Door

Soooo... Another household project. This time I tried to make-over our front door. It's a metal door and was originally dark blue. Here is a before picture (I'm really bad at before pics and so once again I had already started working on it.):

I primed the door with a primer made by Glidden called Gripper Grey. It's an indoor/outdoor primer used on and under dark colors. I primed it and let it dry over night. I don't know if the door was still too hot from the sun baking on it all day but the primer kind of crackled in a few places as it dried. This was really frustrating to me because I tend to lean towards the perfectionist side of things when it comes to painting and crackled primer is not perfect. Also, I think because the door was still warm from the day it was really easy to over-work the primer. It got tacky really quickly and if I accidentally went over it too much it kind of got gunky and weird. Anyway this is what it looked like after it was primed:

Next I painted it. I used the darkest shade of black that Behr makes in an outdoor paint and I got it in a high gloss (a big mistake). I love the color, and as always the Behr paint covered beautifully, but super glossy paint is really difficult to work with (as I learned the hard way). It would have turned out much better with a semi-gloss or even a satin finish. I've decided that I'll just stick with satin finishes from now on because they almost always look perfect when you're completely finished.

The shiny paint was difficult because if there was an inconsistency in a brush stroke or roller stroke it showed, even when it dried. This was annoying because making one long stroke from the floor to the top of the door is hard, especially being in the 8th month of a pregnancy. Oh well, this was a good learning experience for me. I did about four coats (is it cotes or coats? I dunno) and finally felt like it was "good enough". I wouldn't say that I failed miserably but I also wouldn't say that it was a huge success...Not my favorite project so far!

If you're going to paint your front door consider using something other than a high gloss paint... Unless you're going to get it painted at an auto-body shop then it will most likely look exactly how you want it: shiny and seamless. :)