Hey look! Remember when our garage doors were awful? Yeah, I sure do.

Original to the house, they haven’t been taken care of at all over the years. Peeling paint, giant holes, ghetto closures, warped wood…pretty much every horrible thing possible. They were in rough shape.

Now that most of the exterior painting is almost complete it was time to address the garage doors. We can’t afford new garage doors right now, but we could afford about $50 worth of materials to patch them up and paint them black. Behr Ultra Pure Black for the curious (in a semi-gloss).

First thing first. The Boy removed all the hardware, extra nails and broken bits of rotted wood. He sanded down the paint and patched all the damaged nooks and crannies. Seems like sixty years can fuck a door up.

All that white. That’s the exterior wood filler. Each door needed a couple of coats of patching and some major sanding work.

He got the first coat of black on the right door to see how it looked and then it was time to patch up all the wood edging (which was equally as damaged).

Here it is about halfway through. One door done, the other ready for paint. The trim was also getting patched up.

BEFORE

AFTER

The doors are painted and the trim is patched and ready for more of the white paint we’ve used on the entire house. Six five gallon buckets of it so far.

Bam! Sort of done. Almost.

There is still a bit of touch-up and a couple of spots that need paint. The Boy sort of gave up after he stepped in the five gallon bucket of paint while climbing down the ladder.

Yeah.

Seriously.

Like up to his calf in white paint.

Ruined his flip flop and everything.

Gotta say the painted doors are much better than the before though. All that boring prep work was really vital to get the shiny black looking killer. Now I’m thinking we don’t need to replace the doors after all. You know what I can’t wait for? I can’t wait till we are done with exterior projects and all the ugly tools and buckets and STUFF that accumulates can go away forever. I can’t remember a time when the exterior was clean and truly free of clutter or weeds or ugly crap just scattered everywhere. One day. I hope. Before this house kills us.