How to Paint a Door. Step One: Preparation.

I recently took a good, long look at my back door. Staring at doors is not something I usually spend much time doing, but after years of neglect and a lot of staring, I decided that it was past time to finally paint the door and restore it to some of its former glory. As a door.

While I was preparing to prepare to paint the door, it occurred to me that others might benefit from my door-painting experience. So, for your benefit, I have chronicled my journey through all of the steps necessary for painting a door, including preparation, restoration, priming, painting and clean-up.

So gentle reader, take my hand. Let me be your guide.

Step One: Preparation.

Preparing to paint a door can be a challenging experience. First, you must decide that the door actually needs to be painted. After all, the door still functions as a door, doesn't it? It opens and closes and keeps most of the bugs out of your house, right? It hasn't fallen apart due to neglect and been replaced by a pink shower curtain stapled to the door frame, correct? It's a lot of work to paint a door, and it's such a pretty day, wouldn't you rather just grab a beer and relax on the backyard swing reading a book?

In my case, my answers to these questions were, "yes," "yes," "no, not yet," and "definitely, I would!" However, unfortunately, the door itself truly looked like absolute crap. The bottom of the door and part of the frame were all dug into from where our long-deceased former dog scratched it trying to get in. The bottom portion of the door was also starting to separate from the rest of the door and bend outward at the corners due to exposure to rain and cold. Worse, the door has a small window in the top center, and its plastic frame had gotten yellow and cracked due to heat (the back of our house faces west, and it gets intensely hot in the summertime). The frame was actually split in two pieces in some places. In order to paint this door, I would have to defer relaxing on the backyard swing with a beer and actually perform manual labor for a number of hours in order to restore the door and make it presentable again. It would need to be a door that my wife, children, and nosy neighbor who constantly spies on us and gives us nasty looks and tosses rocks at us over the privacy fence could be proud of. In the end, after much debate, personal anguish, and staring, I decided that, yes, the door must be fixed and painted.

That being accomplished, I grabbed a beer and relaxed on the backyard swing for awhile, contemplating my next move.