You now get to read about the start-to-finish of me refinishing my first door!
1) Clean it thoroughly with something like TSP cleaner. This is STRONG stuff, so don't even think about using it without wearing some heavy-duty rubber gloves. It does get out grease and grime, which is what our doors have a lot of! Of course any water you put on wood tends to bring out the texture of the wood grain, which my goal is to eliminate.
2) Sand it with some fairly coarse sandpaper (maybe around 80 grit), then medium coarse (about 120 grit), then vacuum the door thoroughly, and wipe it down with a damp rag. With the sanding, it became evident that our doors have some kind of inner braces every 5 inches or so.
3) Then fill in any holes, dents, etc., with some wood putty. The top and bottom of the doors are a bit splintered and uneven, so this step is important. Let the putty dry and sand the whole thing again with fine sandpaper (about 220 grit).
Below you can see where I filled in a bunch of deep scratches clearly made by an animal that had been locked in my office room and wanted to get out. Poor thing.
4) On my first door, I applied a coat of white primer using a paintbrush. What a disaster! The brush marks were deep and enduring and had the privilege of sanding them out for HOURS. Of course with recently-applied paint you can't use a power sander as the little bits of sanded paint stick to the paper and start scratching the subsequent paint. Hence the prolonged hand-sanding.
I bought a high-density sponge roller to apply a second coat of primer because I wasn't satisfied that everything was completely covered. I liked the effect of the sponge-rollered paint much better!
One other thing: if you look closely you'll see that I switched to using sawhorses that I bought for this project. You'll also see a 5-inch screw inserted into the bottom end of the door; the top end has two of them. I saw this technique on a couple of YouTube videos, which allows you not only to paint the ends but also to flip the door by yourself to be able to paint the whole thing without waiting for one side to dry. Yay - it works great!
5) After the 2nd primer coat dried, I got out the brown trim paint and painted the edges all the way around the door and let them dry. The initial "laying down' layer of paint I applied to the front and back with the sponge roller soaked in quickly and was tricky to spread out evenly where there were splotchy spots. The four-inch sponge roller had to be rolled very quickly to cover the areas before they dried.
At any rate, I let it dry, sanded with yet a finer 220 grit of sandpaper, and applied another coat of brown. After that dried there was STILL some visual evidence of the blobbed paint, so sanded it yet again (using super-fine 330 grit paper at this point) but it still wasn't to the point where I could live with it.
Luckily I found a 6-inch sponge roller at Home Depot and thought it might help. I used it to apply a third, very thin coat of brown paint, and it worked! Below left I tried to show you how smooth it is (not a perfect angle, but you get the idea) and on the right after I installed the new handle.
6) We hung the door on its hinges in my office. I like the color and the look! Unfortunately, it doesn't fit quite right on the top section so won't close all the way, so we're not really done yet. Just a reminder that there is NO easy project but always complications to be worked out. Welcome to Earth life!
Now onward to the next door: only five doors and six closet panels to go. Hopefully now that I've done one, the rest won't take two weeks each to finish!
