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  Painting Exterior Doors

  Feb 6, 2014

  It can be a pretty big project to paint. Normally it is thought of as a simple task, but you must think all the way through the project. It is very important what material you are painting, what elements it will be exposed to, what color it is now and what color you want to make it. For instance, we just had a house that had all black painted exterior doors, jambs, and trim. 

  This is the front door which is fiberglass with wood grain. We first sanded some on the door to see if it was painted properly to begin with. paint is all about adheasion. If we paint over a surface that is not sticking to the door, then our paint will not help it will make it worse. 

  To start the process we lightly sanded the entire surface to be painted. This was not to remove the paint, just to rough up the surface a little to accept our primer. There are many paints now that have primer in them, which may be great for covering, but in this case we are not only going from dark to light, but they are exterior, and we need good adheasion. For that reason, I decided to use a separate primer. After sanding and priming, we were then able to use an exterior  semigloos paint on all 6 exterior door of this house. Skipping the primer is not a place to cut corners. In fact we were able to cut corners on this house, and I will tell you how. 

  You can see how weathered the trim is on this door. This door faces southwest and gets the afternoon sun as well and there not being much of an overhang from the roof, so the very bottom of the trim is very weathered due to water as well. Remember cost of what you are painting. It was not worth tring to bring this trim back to life, so for $17.00 we were able to replace the trim around the door. If you buy a wood trim kit already primed, you can install it, and it is already white and primed, ready for paint.  The outcome for all of the doors was a great waterproof paint job that we know will last much longer than the first time these doors were painted black. 

   

   

   

   

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