How to Paint a Front Door

Video Transcript

"Hi I'm James with JNC Home Repair and today I'm going to show you how to paint your front door. First thing you want to do about painting your front door is you want to prep it properly. You also want to determine whether you or not you have oil-based paint or latex paint on your door. First thing you can do, the easiest way to be able to tell is if you have paint chipping off that's an oil-based paint. If the paint is peeling off that's a latex paint. You also cannot put oil-based paint on top of latex it'll just peel right off. But after you determine what kind of paint you do have, after you've prepped the door, what you want to do is you want to clean it. Obviously you want to get any kind of debris, anything, off of it. You want to go ahead and sand down any kind of chipped paint, or peeled paint. You want to go ahead and sand that down smooth. Any other like little holes or nicks, or any kind of caulking or anything that needs to be repaired first, you want to go ahead and do that first before you do your painting. A good paint job is always about 80% prep, so you want to make sure you do your prep very well. Once you have your door prepped, and you're going through the painting, before you start painting it's a good idea to go ahead and mask off some of the things that you don't want to get paint on. It's a lot easier to go through and paint stuff when it's masked off. Rather than sit there and try to use your brush to try to cut in around it, it just takes a lot more time and a lot more skill. I mean it can be done, but it just usually takes a lot more time than what it's really worth. So try to incorporate some masking involved and that will help you out in the finished product."