Start at Home: Front Door Overhaul

Here is our house after we ripped out the dryscape and planted grass and replaced the vinyl siding with hardy board. (you can see that full renovation here) I loved the way it turned out, there were still a few things we wanted to do like replace the bottom windows and get a new door but it was great for the time being. After about 4 years the paint on the door started to bubble and chip all the way down to the metal. I knew it was time to either refinish the door or replace it. I started looking around for new doors but the ones a really wanted were around $3000 and unfortunately that isn't in the budget right now.

I started sanding down the door but it became apparent very quickly that the entire door needed to be striped down to the metal in order to get a smooth finish. Plus, this door had many coats of paint on it.

I used Kleen Stripe from Home Depot to strip the paint off. As a word of caution this stripper will eat anything it touches, including your skin. I have a few battle marks from it, and it burns like crazy! It also ate the plastic around the side light windows. Which, if we are being honest, I was slightly excited about because I wanted new ones that didn't have the lines through them anyway!

Meanwhile my husband had the most brilliant idea to case in the door to match the upper windows. I love when my husband gets these ideas, I don't argue I just let him do his thing! First he cased the brick around the door and then he added the hardy board to the outside edges. We used silicone and Gorilla Glue to hold the hardy board in place. Once the sides were dry we added the header

Here is the door all cased in with the header and stripped down. You can see on the main door there is still some areas of paint around the edges. I actually took the door off of the hinges to removed the remaining paint.

Now it is time to paint. I wanted a very smooth finish so I decided to spray. I made sure I taped off everything that I didn't want paint on and a little more to allow for the over spray.

I used my Home Right sprayer for this project. I love my Home Right sprayer for projects like this because it doesn't have as much over spray as some of my other guns and it is easy to work with.

First I primed it with a metal primer to get it ready for paint. After the primer was dry I applied 2 coats of Pratt and Lamberts Grey Moire.

Once you are done painting you want to make sure you clean your spray gun out fast so paint doesn't get stuck in there. The Home Right sprayer now has this awesome attachment that makes cleaning out your sprayer quick and easy. You just hook it up to your water turn it on and it washes all the paint out. Pretty slick if you ask me.

After the side lights and casing were all painted I took the door off of the hinges and sprayed it in my spray booth. I used Pratt and Lambert's Putty for my door. After the paint was dry we hung the door, replaced the kick plate and door knob. And we FINALLY have a new/old front door