I should be in Europe this week… on my dream vacation. But instead here I am in quarantined New York doing another paint project because I can’t sit still. But at least we now have Benny (who is making his first blog debut in my lead picture).

I don’t know if anyone ever read my post on “Ideas for Covering Up Tile Floors Without Removing Them”, but I stated a million times that I absolutely despise painting and almost always leave it to the professionals. Leave it to a pandemic and months home for me to not only go against my core philosophy once (with the painting of my metal pool fence), but now twice with our garage door update.

So here’s the deal: a while back my husband hit the garage door button twice by accident while backing his Jeep into the first bay and his Jeep tire smashed the bottom panel of our garage door. When I looked in to getting a new panel, it was such an astronomical price that we might as well just purchase an entire new door- but then we’d have to purchase 3 doors, which was completely out of the question. So instead he used a mallet and fixed it as much as he could.

I had been jonesing to paint our shutters which have been looking weathered thanks to years of sun.

Then last week I was visiting a client’s home for the first time and I commented on her beautiful black garage door- and how I had recently had a conversation with a friend who was purchasing new doors, and she commented how much more money black doors were over white. Karen, (my client), stated that her husband just painted theirs a few years back using Benjamin Moore exterior paint. I didn’t know garage doors could be painted, especially the type of composite ones that we both have- because I assumed they would chip over time. But her's have held up really well- and with my new paint sprayer left over from the pool fence project I decided it wouldn’t take nearly as long and I should just go for it.

Here are the before and afters:

Disclaimer:

You have to check what type of garage door material you have and determine whether the paint will adhere to it prior to application. We have some sort of vinyl composite insulated door and on the back of my door it gives instructions if you should want to paint the door. (Which I followed.) For example, if I had a metal or aluminum door I would have went with a Rust-Oleum paint instead. Definitely check with a paint store- they would know what the best course of action is. In my case I have a great paint store in the next town over, and the woman Terry there is very knowledgable.

I googled types of garage door materials to try to determine what mine was made of and came across this article:

6 Types of garage door materials to know

What type of paint did I use?

Benjamin Moore Low-Lustre Exterior Paint in the color Amherst Grey

BM paint isn’t cheap- but it covers super well. It was close to $50 a gallon and I was told I’d need 2 gallons. However, I did 2 coats on 3 garage doors as well as 16 shutters, and I just barely dipped in to the next paint gallon. (If you’re local you’re more than welcome to buy that almost extra gallon off me, and it’ll be deeply discounted….lol).

How did I apply it? The steps I took were as follows:

Wash down the door + shutters: First we followed the instructions on the back of the garage door which said that if I were to paint it I would have to scrub the door down first and then power wash it. Shad took care of the power washing, and then because I’m super impatient, I towel dried the doors and a 90 degree day took care of drying the shutters for me.

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2. Tape off the surrounding area: This actually took much longer than the paint job itself. First I opened the garage doors and laid a plastic tarp under each door, then closed the doors on top of the tarp. Then I used 3M Scotchblue Pre-taped Painter’s Plastic to tape off the encasing around the outside of the door, and it was a total game changer. The tape is already attached to the plastic itself- all you have to do is lay the tape up and pull the plastic out. I taped the door to meet up with the rubber seal around the outside of the door (meaning I painted the rubber seal as well), because I didn’t want to have to deal with opening the door itself with painter’s tape attached to it. I also taped the hardware on the door. See picture below.

Painter's Tape with Plastic

plastic drop cloths

3. Paint Sprayer: Then I loaded up my paint sprayer, which is in bad shape aesethically (but not mechanically) thanks to the whole paint fiasco which happened when I was painting the pool fence (I didn’t attach it correctly on the last round and dropped a half gallon of oil paint all over myself). I turned the nozzle horizontally and got to work spraying in rows and making sure my next row down partially covered the previous row.

My paint sprayer

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FAQ

How many coats did it take? 2

How long did it take? The paint sprayer cut down what would have been a full day’s job to 20 minutes a door per coat. I did two coats, so roughly it took me 40 minutes a door. The 16 shutters took about 40 minutes total between the two coats as well.

How long did it take to dry? It only took an hour to dry, and that’s probably because I chose the hottest day to paint (it was 90 degrees). I waited until the next morning to open the garage doors to stick our cars back in- because I wanted to be sure.

What did you use to paint the lights from grey to black? It took some coaxing to convince my husband to take down the lights for me, but I used Rust-Oleum flat black spray paint. (It’s listed in my blog post below on “The Amazing Transformative Power of Spray Paint”.

Total Cost? I already had the paint sprayer from a previous job, so: 2 gallons of BM Paint *you probably only need one depending on the size of your job: $98, Painter’s tape + plastic drop cloths: $18

And lastly, I highly recommend Gervic’s Paint Center in Middletown, NY if you’re local to Orange County.

Gervic's Paint Center