This winter, I re-weatherstripped my front door. This involved prying off all of the old weatherstripping that had been painted over several times, fixing the threshold, and installing new weatherstripping. That part was fairly straightforward, though I ended up repainting the doorframe in the process.

However, the old weatherstripping had attached to the door itself, so removing it had removed a lot of paint and left the edges of the door looking pretty bad. So I needed to repaint the door. It was painted white, over cream, but I decided that I’d like to do a more dramatic color instead. After some consideration, I narrowed down my options to a very dark purple that picks up the tone of the bricks, or the same turquoise that I have on,y living room wall. Since I wanted more brightness, I went with the turquoise.

The first step was scraping off the old paint. I discovered fairly quickly that the white paint was latex, while the cream paint underneath it was oil. This was a problem, because it meant the white paint chipped off a lot more than I had expected. After several weekends of scraping, I decided it was good enough, and took my power sander to all the flat surfaces to smooth them out. I also used wood filler to clean up the edges where the old weatherstripping had attached – tiny nail holes every couple inches around the entire door.

Once I’d prepared the surface by filling and then sanding, it was time to paint. I took all the door hardware off – I considered replacing it, but I’d been given a new door knocker that matched the existing brass handle and deadbolt, so it seemed unnecessary to change those. I also bought a peephole so I can see who’s on my porch without standing on my tiptoes to see out the windows.

I didn’t want to use oil paint, so I chose a primer that would go over oil but allow me to use latex paint. After a coat of that, I did two coats of exterior latex, using a brush for the narrow grooves and a mini roller for the large panels. This part was frustrating because I had to have the door open for nearly an entire day to do all the coats, and my cats were not pleased at being confined to the studio while I worked. But the paint went on beautifully, and dried quickly enough that I could shut the door that night without it sticking. Once it was dry, I reassembled all the door hardware, including reversing the deadbolt that’s been backward since the day I moved in! I also scraped all the excess paint off the windows – I decided it was easier to scrape them than to tape them in advance, and it worked fine.

So here’s my lovely, newly painted front door! Ignore the peeling paint on the porch floor, that’s a project for another day…