Everyone loves a red door, so the first year I owned my house, I painted the front door red. (It was a beige matching the trim, very boring when you could do otherwise.) You can even see the red front door in my Squirrel Buster blog post here!

But after a good oh FIFTEEN YEARS, even a fire-engine red door can look a little tired. It was time for a change! All I knew was that I wanted a velvety, flat finish, so I got some advice and picked up my paint chips to test and get approved by the most important constituents: house guests.1 (These house guests were also good friends-from-out-of-town.)

Green paint chips against red door
I was tempted by the two darkest greens
Go light, or go dark?
I think I went with the one in the middle

After choosing the colour, it was simply a matter of applying a primer to go on top of the old Tremclad oil-based paint. Primers can be in latex or in oil, and either one can be used for a latex paint finish — but it’s usually best to use oil-based primer to prep a former-oil-paint surface. (You cannot paint latex on top of oil paint and expect a good result.)

First, one coat of oil-based primer on old oil paint
Primer
First coat of exterior latex
Second coat of exterior lates
Don’t forget the edges!
The finished door

How to keep clean while painting

I used a drop cloth under the door to protect the floor in case of an accident (safe!), and I took off the door sweep and the door handle. I didn’t remove the deadbolt (I’m not sure why), so I taped both it and the windows, but not the hinges. A careful hand is a skill worth learning, and much more economical than the time lost by taping. It’s easy to not slop paint on the hinges. If you do, having a damp sponge or wet rag on hand is necessary – and cleans it up quickly. At the end of a job, a Magic Eraser will take care of any faint smears remaining.

Wrap your brush, roller, and paint tray up in a plastic bag (or re-use cling film, such as that which came with a tray of vegetables or mushrooms) between coats to keep them from drying out.

You can get four uses out of a roller in one big job: primer, a coat of white latex (e.g. ceiling), then the first coat of colour, then the second. Obviously, scrape down the roller between each use. It’d be best in this case to have two paint trays, one for the primer/white, and one for the colour.

As with any oil paint, it’s easier to throw out the tools I’d used for the primer (a foam brush and an old mini-roller) than try to clean them. I used clean/new tools for the exterior latex (and you should buy decent tools in the first place, as they’re infinitely reusable). This was a small job, using a 1″ brush and a 4″ mini-roller, so there wasn’t much to clean up.

Wash your tools

When done, clean them thoroughly: first, use a roll scraper to get every bit of paint out of the roller back into the tray. Then use up that paint for the last set of brush strokes you need to do, and/or scrape it back into the can. Use the comb side of the scraper tool to work the last drips out of the brush.

Do not wash the paint tray. That sends more pollution down to the water treatment plant than is necessary (also: don’t dump paint water down a storm sewer! Use the sink, or else dump it in a pile of dirt at the back of your garden). Let the paint tray dry out completely, and reuse it. After you have 3, 4, or 5 coats of paint on a tray, you can soak it in very hot water for 10 minutes, score it, and the paint will then nicely peel out. Toss the peeled paint in the trash; reuse the tray.

Dunk your tools right away in a bucket of water and soak/work the paint out. Rinse your tools in the sink, using a scrub brush and even soap, until the water rinses clean. Form the brush bristles and dry it flat; stand the roller on end. If you look after your tools, your tools will look after you.

I’ll be taking more opportunity to write about bigger painting projects. I’ve been painting a lot since the beginning of the pandemic. For those who are curious, this is an article on how to best handle the remainders from bigger paint jobs: https://ecopainting.ca/eco-painting/environmental-tips/disposing-paint-waste/

…Two years later

There’s one difference between flat paint and gloss paint when it comes to outdoor finishes: glossy paint sheds or hides dirt a bit better than flat does! So this year, after giving it yet another washing, I freshened the paint up. (This time, I also took off the deadbolt so there’d be no over-painting around it.)

First I gave the whole door a light, 240-grit sanding. Then I taped the window panes. Then, I applied a single coat of paint using a foam roller, “misting at” the surface with a plant mister while rolling/brushing/smoothing out the fresh paint.

After it was dry, I removed the tape and put the hardware back. I moved the “No Flyers” sticker to the more-visible side of the door (this is a local thing: if you don’t have this sticker, then you’ll get a weekly delivery of flyers).

Finally, I put up the Autumn Harvest decoration using a magnet. You won’t believe how long it took me to figure that one out – how to hang a decoration on a metal door.

That tiny speck of white you see on the left? That’s actually fluff from a blowing seed. Don’t worry, it’s not embedded!
  1. This is actually true, and one of the reasons why my house is actually nice now (as it actually wasn’t when the only guests I had were friends and family — who are rarely offended if your aesthetic and functional standards aren’t as high as theirs, though they do still notice, and yes, they gossip). I will eventually be writing about having been an AirBnB host. I have things to say (mostly good, though of course some cautionary). ↩︎