As my kids have gotten a bit older and I am having an easier time sneaking in some home projects, slowly but surely we have begun the process of making this house ours. One of the projects that we have been working on is replacing all the interior doors. Originally, we thought we might just hire this one out, but my dad is pretty handy and my husband wants to learn so we figured we would give it a go ourselves (with a lot of help from my dad). A few months ago, they hung two doors while my dad was visiting and I finally have gotten around to painting one of them. The second one is in the basement all ready to be painted and I will hopefully get to it in the next week or two. We did not do pre-hung doors and the boys did all the cutouts for the hardware.
Luckily, all the upstairs trim is already a nice bright white, and the previous homeowners left a partial can for us that was well-labeled and I was able to determine that the trim is just a basic Semi-gloss in Sherwin-Williams Extra White (SW 7006). How easy is that? It is basically just their untinted standard white, but it's exactly what I wanted.
Here is the before and after of the nursery door.
Before:
The wall on which the alphabet print hangs also used to be Ravens purple (to the dismay of my Bengals-loving husband) and I recently painted the wall (two coats of primer to cover all that purple and 2 coats of paint) to match the rest of the room. The prior owners had painted all the electrical outlet covers (which I replaced), but it did make it easy to get a color match!.
I had never painted a door before and did a lot of pinterest research prior to doing it. This was my favorite resource on how to paint a six panel door. I basically used this technique except that I used a brush only for my 2 coats of paint instead a roller and then drag method. You can't just arbitrarily paint it, you really should do it in a systematic order. After filling in any imperfections with wood putty and sanding the entire door, I did 1 coat of primer and 2 coats of paint (only 1 coat under the hinges). Each coat was progressively easier as I got used to how best to paint a door. I used a small 4 inch roller for the flat sections for the primer coat only and then used a brush for the 2 coats of actual paint. I got to a point where I could do a coat on one side in about 45 minutes. After trying a few different size brushes I decided that I like a 2 inch Purdy XL brush best for this task.
I still have to go back and putty and paint some small areas on the trim. Because we couldn't be without a nursery door while I painted it, we put the old door back up with the old hardware as the prior owners painted over the hinges and one of them couldn't be removed from the old door. As a consequence I couldnt fix the trim until all the new hardware and door were installed.
All the hardware is now oil-rubbed bronze. It is amazing how much a simple door and some new hardware can upgrade a space.
This project has made me excited about the simple power of a new coat of paint!
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