door painting | Hicks House

What color to paint the front door? It’s such a big decision it sends the first impression that visitors and passerby’s see of your home. It was such a big decision in fact that when the builder offered to paint the door for us before we closed we couldn’t come to a decision. I even went so far as to PhotoShop different colors onto a picture of the house to help us decide. In the end we decided to live with the house for a while and just had him paint it white.

white house with a white door – how ordinarily boring

close up

After several months we finally came to the consensus that we wanted yellow. It’s such a happy color, how can you come home to a yellow door and not become instantly more upbeat? Now the only question was what kind of yellow?

This was our inspiration that I found our Pinterest. We both loved it. It’s from Beautiful MattersBlog

Inspiration Door

So we went to the paint store and looked at all the options of paint swatches and came to a decision. I was slightly worried it may be on the bright side, but hey it’s only paint and the whole point is to get the door to “POP” right?

So I got to work cleaning the door with some mineral oil to get off any dirt and grime that was on it. (I read this is extremely important in order for the paint to adhere properly.) It turned out to be a LOT dirtier than I could have imagined.

look how dirty!

Then I got ready to start painting – shook up the can to mix the paint properly and popped it open…

the first sign this might not go so well…

It looked awfully bright, but hey the inspo door is bright and you can’t always tell by what the color looks like in the can right? After all there is way more of it concentrated in a small little area and it always looks different once its dry. So I got to painting. Here’s the finished product:

close up

far away

My eyes! MY EYES!!! We couldn’t have possibly picked a color this bright! the swatch must have lied to us…

oh but we did pick it

What were we thinking? I’ll tell you what I’m thinking now, I’m thinking I need a re-do. As its now the end of October and its getting too cold outside in New England I may have to wait until spring. It’s possibly it may grow on me in the next couple of months – stranger things have happened.

The bright yellow on bright white is just too much – the inspiration door is bright yellow on gray which helps tone it down… Rookie mistake! We should have known better!

So what do you think is it too bright or just right? I’d love to hear your opinion!

During our “Operation Rent the Condo” one of the things on the list to make the place as pretty as possible was to replace all the old flat panel wood grain doors with white 6-paneled doors. I originally thought this was going to be such an easy project – I mean they sell the doors already white and pre-drilled so all you have to do is hang them right? WRONG

For starters because our condo was built in the early 1980s, or just because of the way it was built each doorway is not identical to each other. If you are buying pre-drilled doors this is a big problem as they will not line up. So we bought the ones that were not yet drilled – which although cheaper required a lot more labor from Ken to get them ready.

Measure each door, mark where the hinges go, where the knob goes, router out the hinge holes drill the knob hole. It was a big production. However it happened pre-blog so there are no photos of all that.

Perhaps the most helpful of tips though is how we painted the doors (yes you still have to paint them – even though they look white they are just primed). I thought the idea was ingenious, and even though Ken said he didn’t come up with it on his own I’m giving him credit anyway :-).

Step 1 – Drill 2 screws into the bottom unfinished part of the door and one screw into the top unfinished part of the door only about 1/4 to 1/2 way. You are going to use the screws to balance the door on sawhorses so no surface of the door is actually touching the sawhorse.

Top of the door with one screw

Bottom of the door with two screws

See how the door is balancing on the screws? This is important, you’ll see why in a minute. Don’t worry about the little holes this will create as once the door is hung you won’t be able to see the top or bottom edges.

Step 2 – Paint the door. We used Beher Ultra Premium Ultra Pure White Trim and Door paint in Eggshell and rolled all the flat parts of the door then did the panel cut outs with a brush making sure to get the corners real good.

Step 3 – Flip it! That’s right you don’t need to wait for it to dry because the door isn’t touching anything! Here’s how: On the end of the door that has two screws, pick up one screw in each hand just enough so the side with one screw doesn’t lift off the saw horse.

Pick up the two screws

See how the door is balanced on the one screw?

Flip it 180° so the unpainted side is pointed up and then rest the two screws back on the sawhorse. You can know pain the other side while the first side dries. I know, my mind was blown as well. My husband is a genius.

Three doors set up all at once.

We had more than 6 doors to do and only room to do three at a time, so we also came up with a neat way of drying them in order to free-up the sawhorses. Again the screws came in handy. Ken tied a wire around the top screw then we stood them up on the bottom two screws and tied them to some sort of pipe hanging from the ceiling of the garage. (This made me nervous but I was assured it was OK and nothing bad happened)

Drying station

If you’ve ever tried to paint doors by resting it on the sawhorse or worse not taking it off the hinges, this method will change your life. (for the few times in your life you have to paint doors anyway)