A super speedy garage makeover is easy as pie, especially if you have wooden or metal doors that do particularly well with a few coats of exterior paint. Our double garage has one big metal door (but it’s painted to look like there are two) so applying two coats of black semi-gloss exterior latex paint took no time at all- and only set us back about $20 for the paint.
We’ve always thought the maroon doors were a bit dated and a coat of glossy black would instantly update our almost 20-year-old garage. Sure enough, the crisp & classic black paint (Glidden’s Dark Secret) was just what the doctor ordered. Here’s the ho-hum before (we used large pieces of cardboard to keep from dripping on the concrete below the doors):
And now for the obligatory in-progress shot. John painted that odd diagonal stripe right before I snapped the picture… he’s such a rebel.
And here’s the crisp and clean after picture, thanks to little more than an hour or so of painting. We actually started this project at around 5:30 in the evening so we were racing the sun. And we’re happy to say that we finished well before it set (it would have been quite a messy task to be out there applying black paint in the dark).
We used a regular wool roller to apply the bulk of the paint (a foam roller is known to create more bubbles and inconsistencies so we stick to the wool/poly ones whenever we can) and a simple angled brush to get into all those cracks and trim out the edges. By the time we finished our first coat it was ready for a second, and the second coat did the trick (and of course went on much faster than the first). It’s really nice coming home to a “new” garage, and when we recently got the house appraised (stay tuned for those details) the guy actually asked if we got a new garage! Gotta love that $20 upgrade.
What about you guys? Do you have any painting projects on the horizon for spring? From adding color to your front door to gussying up some terra cotta pots, we wanna hear all about your hue to-do list.
Leave a Reply