Renovating the exterior of your home can be a pain if you’ve been living in the same house for a long time. If your house faces the sun, the paint on the outside can start to wear down and crack over time, since good appearances can always last for so long if they are left poorly maintained. This doesn’t just apply to the exterior siding of a house; it goes for the garage door as well. Since most garage doors are painted some varying shade to match the main house exterior, this paint can start to fade or get funky-looking after many years of baking in the sun. If this is how your garage door looks, it might be time to give your garage door a facelift.
The first thing you should do to start giving your garage door a facelift is to clean it. A lot of times, a good cleaning can make a huge difference. I suggest using a power washer to clean your garage door. If you don’t have one, then try to ask your friends and family if they have one you can borrow. If they don’t, you may be able to rent one from a local hardware store. Finally, if you don’t want to do that, you can just give it a good sponge wash with a hose and some vinegar water — just make sure you rinse it well after washing with the vinegar.
But sometimes giving your door a wash just isn’t enough to really give your garage door a facelift. You may even consider repainting or staining your garage door to make it look new again. After you wash your door is the best time to do this, because then the stain or paint will stick straight to the door. A gel stain works really well, but you can also use paint.
When you start painting your garage door, it’s best to wait until your garage door isn’t in direct intensity sunlight. That means that it is good to wait until late afternoon or early morning to do this job, which is probably the best environment to work outside in anyway. You will want the temperature outside to be between 50-90 degrees with moderate humidity, as this is the best weather condition for painting.
While painting, your applied paint typically looks best if you maintain a stroke in the same direction of the grain on the door. If you just want to update the look of your paint, you can pick a stain that will look nice over the paint color you’ve already used, and one coat usually should make a dramatic difference and can be bought for less than $20. If you are only doing one coat of stain, you can usually finish the whole project in one afternoon in four to five hours.
Some Other Painting Tips:
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Paint the outer recess of the panel first and then paint the inner panel
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Paint vertically, from top to bottom
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Paint the outer perimeter last
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Use a paint tray
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Paint the outer frame after the inner panels
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Use painter’s tape and a small brush for the trim
Written by the staff of G.P. Construction, the leading experts in garage door repair Columbia MO has to offer!