Tips On Painting French Doors

Ahhh.  French Doors.  They really can class up a space.  Our painted black beauties were like the icing to our family room cake.  I think the French would say that they bring a certain 'je ne sais quois' to the room.



I am so excited to finally bring painted black doors to our new house.  This is one trend that I just didn't have the balls guts to do in the past.  But man oh man... I'm sure glad I did.  And now I'm not sure how I'm going to stop myself from painting all interior doors black.  HELLO DRAMA!

We considered ourselves pretty lucky that these doors were already here.  It's the one piece of hardware that we actually kept from the original room.  Our choices were to keep the track lighting or the french doors.  Man, I miss those track lights. #notreally

Let's take a look back at what the doors looked like pre-gut.

Here they are again after we slapped on a bit of paint (and did a few other things) in the family room.  Snoozefest by the doorway, right?



Then... BAM



It's just magic I tell ya.

By the way, the paint color from the two above pictures is the same (Benjamin Moore - Thunder).  It looks brown at night (with LED lights) and gray in daylight.  Crazy how paint can change so much with different lighting.

Let's talk about how we transformed those beauties.  And I may throw in a little timesaving tip for you... because I learned a pretty valuable lesson while painting these suckers.



1) First, we removed the doors from the brass hinges.  We also removed the knob hardware since we planned to replace them with something more fitting.  Then we laid these guys flat on a dropcloth so we could paint with no fear.  Fear of drippage, that is. 

2) We lightly sanded the doors to create a smooth and sleek surface for the final coats.  There were a few existing paint drips on the white side of the door; I removed these drips using the same process that I used when I painted the kitchen cabinets.  We vacuumed and wiped the doors clean, then took 3 hours to carefully tape each pane on both sides of the door.  3 hours.  Let me repeat that, it took me 3 hours.



So, we're clear that it took me 3 hours of non-stop taping, right? Waste. of. time. I would rather watch 3 hours of golf than tape these doors again.  

Errr, I take that back.  I would rather tape.  



3) Finally, I brushed on 3 light coats of black paint (allowing each coat to dry 6-8 hours before reapplying) and then removed the tape after allowing the final coat to dry.

Let's put on the brakes right here.  STOP!  Do not follow the instructions above.  Delete that tutorial from you brain.

I made a mistake.  Yup, I'm human.  And I didn't google "how to paint french doors."  Otherwise, someone else would've warned me that taping french doors prior to paint is a huge, massive, very large waste of time.



Because no matter how good you think you are at taping, and no matter how expensive the tape is, you'll still get unpainted spots, and paint leakage under the tape.  I'll never get those 3 hours of taping back.  3 hours. of. taping.

I used my window scraper to remove the bits of paint that creeped below the tape, and that's when it hit me.



You don't need to tape windows when painting them!

Let's start this tutorial all over again.

1) Remove the hardware (knobs and hinges).  Or don't if you like the look of messy painted hardware.

2) Watch 3 hours of golf.  Crack open a beer.  Whatever you do, do NOT tape the windows.

3) Load your brush up with paint, and brush on as many coats as you would like.  Get paint all over the window if you please.  Write your name, let the dog stamp their paw on the window...

4) Then take a window scraper (read: straight razor) and grab your beer.  Wait!  Let the paint dry. Because dried paint comes off like butter!

But even better than butter.  Just in case you've never scraped paint off a window, it's soooo satisfying.  It's kinda like rolling dried rubber cement into balls.  I could have scraped this paint all night.  But we ran out of beer thankfully, it only took 20 minutes - which was much less time than taking 3 hours to tape.



4) Clean up is a breeze.  Grab the vacuum with a soft attachment to catch all the paint curls and some spray cleaner for the windows.

That's it.  You can have freshly painted french doors in a few hours.

We rehung the doors with oil-rubbed bronze hinges, and added new dummy doorknobs.  We used dummy knobs because the doors don't latch together.  They use a ball catch on the top trim.  It's not an ideal way to close the doors, but it was already there and these doors are only closed when we leave the house (to keep little four-legged friends from entering).



And now, these doors are fancy and suave.  They almost speak with a French accent "welcome to ze room.  No, REMOVE THE SHOES!"  

Oh yeah, we also (finally) wrapped the supporting beams. We are still contemplating finish options for those... but they're looking quite beefy :)

Next up... let's do something about those tulip sconces. 

 

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