digest
The right way to paint your door and increase your curb appeal. First step, we got to clean because we are going to be using liquid mask today. Get yourself a foaming glass cleaner. Hit the trims. Liquid mask can be applied with a DIY paint sprayer machine. The idea is really simple. If you have a clean surface, then it will apply to the glass and all the other painted surfaces around it. Then, when you're all finished with your painting, you take your knife and you can just cut the thin film away, and it makes it look like this thing was painted in the factory.
All right, guys. Here's my product: Masking Liquid H2O. You buy it by the quart, not by the gallon, unless you're planning on doing a lot of work. This is not something that you dilute. So, I'm going to put it through a strainer. Okay, I'm happy with that. Now, we're ready to spray. I should do a test. I like fast, thick enough of a coat that it creates a nice film when it's dry. If you go too thin, then it's not going to peel away as effectively. Okay. Now, some people like to say, "Hey, why don't you just tape it all off?" But I'm pretty much finished already.
All right. Next step is to get rid of any of the old sealants that look like junk right here. The ceiling has come loose from the aluminum. What's going on here is basically a combination of three things. One is weather, one is UV rays, and the other one is expansion and contraction of different building materials, and the fact that some of the materials that are used to seal up your home don't bond well with smooth and rough surfaces. Before I mask up, I've got to clean the plate. This product is a silicone, so it needs to be primed before we can paint it. So, I'm going to tape this off and prime my silicone. There we go. Now, my latex bonded in 10 minutes. If you're not familiar with this tool, it's called the tuck pointer, available at any hardware store. They come in two sizes. This is the small one, and that's for a quarter-inch joint.
All right. Next step is to apply the paintable silicone everywhere it needs to be replaced. Number 10. Here's my masking paper for the sides of the doors. Flashing tape sticks really good to bra. That ain't going nowhere. All right, we're ready to paint. Wait a minute. I got to take off the doorknobs. We're going to take off the doorknob. We're going to switch it out, because this nasty old 1974 brass is just not going to look good with the color that I chose. Get rid of all your hardware before you paint, because if I tape over this and then cut it back with a knife, it takes a long time. The replacement hardware comes in the doorknob kit that I bought. This way, this part of the wood also gets painted, and it looks a lot prettier.
Now, the rule about doors when you're painting them is: when the door is open and you're outside, everything you see needs to be the same color as outside. So that's the inside jamb, that's the back side of this door, and the inside of this jamb. That's really all you need to know. This is going to stay white.
So, what I'm going to do is run a bit of masking tape on the back side of this door, because there's a seam joint right here from the side to the front. If you just put masking tape there, you can mask off that seam. This is just to protect against the overspray and to give you a perfect line where it joins on the door. So, the white is for the inside and the dark is for the outside in my case. If you have trouble making that perfect, turn the corner, take out your trusty knife, and you can just cut the tape right down that joint, because it'll sit right there. That'll give you a perfect line. Cheers.
Here's the issue. You've got to create a line here for your paint, inside versus outside. So, we're going to use the tape to actually create that line. This gasket, I'll tell people, serves two functions. Getting rid of it means you can paint everything perfectly. This is something you can also buy at the home store. It's a little wedge. You can get these in black, white, and dark brown. When you're done, you just put in a new one.
Pour this into the filter, and strain out any chunks that might be in there. Okay. The nozzle points in the right direction. When it's on top, it's shooting a horizontal beam, so this is for going up and down. Then turn it sideways, and it goes left and right. While that's setting up and drying, we'll give it five minutes. I'll keep spraying, and then we'll come back, switch out the hinges, and do the next section.
I'm also going to do where the doorknob goes. We'll get that going so it's nice and dry before we put the handle back on. I notice that it's not spraying on one spot. Check this out. It's really heavy on the left but not the right, so it might be plugged. You just turn this around and get rid of the chunk. That's a much better spray pattern. This is the new DIY version of a paint sprayer, from Graco. The TrueCoat 360. It's plugged in, not battery, which means it's affordable at about 250 bucks. You can paint like a pro.
I've got to get that hinge back on. I don't mind setting this into the wet paint either. It's not going to hurt anybody's feelings. I'm putting this on right now just so I can continue painting, but I definitely need to get the same color hinges as the door hardware. That's going to be a black handle. Next one: two security screws in the same hinge, and no security screws in the other hinges. All right, hinge is on.
Just doing a little bit of due diligence here. Kind of like it without the glass. There we go, boys.
It's the next day, guys. Here we are. We are going to reveal the glass. This is an HP knife, a 25mm with a black carbide tip, really, really sharp. Make sure it's a brand-new blade. We're going to set it right in the groove of the glass, and without leaving the surface, turn that corner. This is a one-and-done scenario. I don't want you going back and making a second cut line. This is the money shot. Now we're going to use the knife to get the thing peeling. Remember that the original spray should create enough of a film that we can just pull it off in one sheet. Perfect every time. Wow.