As a Real Estate Agent by day, I’ve seen a lot of houses. One of my favorite things to find when I’m touring homes with clients is solid wood doors. I get extra excited when they’re antique or feel like they have history. They’re so beautiful and welcoming. In my mid-twenties when my husband and I built our house, we opted for a steel front door to save money. Now that we’ve lived in our house for seven years, I think I’ve hit the “seven-year itch” stage. Our charcoal front door needed a face lift and I decided to take a leap by painting our door to look like wood.
Usually, I go in to DIY projects with a little bit of hesitancy. This is the first thing people see when they enter my home. As I wrestled with myself about the consequences of messing it up, I finally landed on the fact that even if it was a complete disaster, all I had to do is repaint it if it looks atrocious.
So then I started my research. There is quite a bit of information about how to paint and stain metal doors to look like wood. It turns out that this project was going to be quick, affordable and easy to do!
To get started painting a metal door to look like wood, you will need:
- Choice of cleaning agent
- Primer
- Base color (I’ll get to that later)
- Gel Stain
- Painter’s Tape
- Old paint brush or cheap chip brush
- Foam brush or undamaged paint brush
- Rags
- Sealer
This is how my door started. You’ll have to excuse the messy concrete porch. I’m not going to lie – I live in the woods, have two dogs who seem to have a compulsive desire to lay in mud, and a flock of chickens who strongly believe they are entitled to spending afternoons hanging out on the porch.
The first thing you have to do is prep the door. I scrubbed my door with my favorite cleaner to remove all of the dirt and then painted on a thin layer of primer.
After the primer had dried, I added one coat of base color.
For the base, I went to Lowe’s and picked up a sample size container of Sherwin Williams “Latte.” You can use any tan color as long as it is close to the color of natural wood. It’s going to get mostly covered by the stain you apply later, but this is going to set the undertones for your painted door.
The base color does not have to be applied pretty. I used an old paintbrush and applied a thin layer of paint so it would dry quickly. It is important to brush the base layer on in the direction that the wood grain would go on a real wood door. It adds the right dimension and won’t look conflicting when you put the stain on later.
I didn’t remove my door handles, but I wish that I had. It didn’t look awful when I was finished, but it would have made my life a lot easier to just take them off before I started.
After the base layer was dry, it was time for gel stain. For this project I chose to use the Walnut stain.
I opted to buy a couple of chip brushes when I picked up the paint sample because they are cheap and the bristles aren’t uniform. Gel stain is oil based, and oil based paint is no fun to clean up after. Throwing away the chip brush wasn’t going to hurt my feelings after the project was finished. It may also be a good idea to use an old paint brush that is near the end of it’s life. The raggedy bristles add to the illusion of real wood grain.
I started at the top by taping off the first “plank.” By using the painter’s tape, it keeps your brush from making a cross-hatched pattern with your brush strokes when you switch grain directions. The entire time you’re working, it’s important to keep in mind what real wood would look like.
To apply the gel stain, I just quickly swiped my brush back and forth to work the gel stain over the first section. After it was covered in stain, I slowly and steadily dragged the brush across the entire “plank” to give the illusion of one continuous piece of wood.
The weather plays a big part in how quickly everything dries. It was warm and sunny when I did this. I found that I had to work fairly quickly in order to be able to move the stain around like I wanted to.
Pay special attention to the “mitered” corners. I spent a little extra time getting my brush just right so the brush strokes would meet in the corner the way real wood comes together.
After the middle section of the door was finished, I removed all of the tape and switched it to cover the horizontal planks I had just created. The stain was still sticky (and it will be for a long time) but I went ahead and taped over it anyway. As long as you don’t press the tape in too firmly, it should come off just fine. I hung the tape back off the line just the slightest bit so there wouldn’t be any of the base color left showing and began applying the gel stain in the opposite direction.
Again, working the color onto the door and then going back over the entire length helped create the illusion of real wood.
When all of the gel stain was applied, I used an old rag to rub some of the gel stain in and soften some of the “grain” that was too prominent. However, it dried a lot quicker than I thought it would. If I were to do it over again, I would have used the rag sooner.
And here she is!
Somehow, the porch got even dirtier. I’m pretty sure it was Griffin turning sticks into mulch. He likes to help.
It took a solid two days for the gel stain to completely dry. When it was time, I applied a coat of matte poly. I was hoping that it would dry a little less shiny, but it never settled down. The matte finish helped!
I also decided to paint the inside of the door to look like wood, too. I took what I learned when doing the outside and modified my approach a little. Instead of finishing the whole thing and then going back with a rag to soften it, I started using the rag after each “plank” was covered. I ended up liking it better and think it’s going to look great after I apply the matte finish on top! So there you have it. Happy painting!
