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A Metal Door Makeover, A Very Naughty Dog, and an Ad Space Giveaway!

Let me tell you the story about how painting the interior of our exterior metal doors led to waking up Saturday morning to a torn up trash bag (with nasty diapers) and the biggest mess I have ever seen in my life. 
 
T E D D Y !
 
Let’s back up.

Last week I ran out to Home Depot to grab some popcorn ceiling filler (don’t get me started… story for another blog post) and stumbled upon a quart of paint that was advertised as door, trim, and furniture gel paint.  One of my good friends out in Arizona recently had an awesome experience painting her cabinets with a gel stain, so I was intrigued. 

                       

I’ve been wanting to paint the interior of my four exterior doors for a while now but felt intimidated by the process of potentially taking off the doors and just the whole shebang. Taking off the doors, finding horses to put them on, and having the house doorless all day has seemed like a bigger bite than I’ve wanted to chew, so I’ve put it off for almost a year now.
When I saw this paint that advertised being specifically for doors that left no brush marks, I paused to read the can a little more. The $19 price tag sold me! In the cart the paint went. 
As soon as I got home, I plopped Hadley down with some dinner and quickly got to work prepping the doors. I first tested a small area on my sunroom door to make sure I liked the paint, and because I loved it I continued the prep work. I used my fav green froggy tape (blue painters tape is for the birds compared to green froggy tape) on the two doors that have windows and unscrewed all of the hardware. The prep work took about 45 minutes and then I got to painting!
Here are the doors before I attacked them with my paint brush. From L to R: side patio door, sunroom door, front door, and garage door (excuse the picture but it’s the only one I have).

I painted the first coat on all four doors in under an hour, and trust me – I’m no painting/DIY expert. It was very easy and something anybody could tackle in a short amount of time with the right tools. This gel paint slid on like butter, and a little bit of paint went a very long way. By the time Jamie got home from work I was already cleaning up.
After letting the doors dry overnight, I got up the next morning and painted on a light second coat. The hardest part of painting on the second coat was keeping Hadley occupied for long enough to keep her away from the paint. She couldn’t have cared any less the night before about the paint, but that morning she was all about what Mommy was doing! She actually did end up touching the wet paint a few hours after I finished up which left a tiny mark with her fingerprint on it. I didn’t even bother fixing it because it’s so tiny and really kind of precious. It’s my house, so I don’t mind my daughter’s tiny fingerprint permanently on the door. 😉
Here are the bright white, high gloss doors today!

Okay – Let’s talk about my naughty dog for 2.5 seconds. 
So on Friday (the day that I painted the second coat), I needed to take the trash outside to the can, but I couldn’t go through the sunroom door to get outside because I couldn’t put the handles back on yet. Because I’m lazy and didn’t feel like going out through the garage, I just left the trash by the back door assuming that I’d put the handles back on in a few hours and then take the trash out.
Later that night we decided to leave Hadley at a friend’s house with their son and his babysitter so that we could have a little parent’s night out, and we didn’t get home until close to midnight. Of course I’d completely forgotten about the handles and the trash.
When we got home we didn’t flip on many lights and instead went straight to bed. The next morning I woke up Jamie when I screamed “Oh my STARS!” after Hadley and I walked into the kitchen. Teddy was right behind me until he realized that I’d NOTICED. I don’t even know where he went to hide, but he booked it out of my sight fast! Ha! He was so guilty.

We quickly put Hadley in the living room with her toys so that we could hold our breath and clean up the mess. What a Saturday morning. You better believe the handles went back on the doors pretty quick. 😉 *head smack*
Just a few more things about the doors!
I highly recommend using Glidden’s Door, Trim, & Furniture paint if you’re considering freshening up your doors. A few reasons I loved it:

  • As I mentioned above, a little bit goes a long way. With just one $19 quart of this paint I was able to do two coats on three doors and one coat on the fourth door (the fourth door already had a coat of other white paint on it).
  • The final feel of the door is sleek and feels incredibly smooth.
  • There are no brush marks. To also help eliminate brush marks, I used a brand new brush that I purchased at the same time as the paint. The combination of a brand new brush plus this type of paint equaled no visual brush marks.
One big tip to remember when using this type of paint:
  • If you get it on your hands, you will have a very difficult time washing the stickiness off. I read online that rubbing your hands in mayonnaise and then washing them like normal will get off the paint, and sure enough that worked like a charm! Don’t forget to put that little tip in your back pocket the next time you can’t get paint off your hands. 🙂

Changing gears a little bit, now it’s time for an ad space giveaway! I am teaming up with 17 other bloggers to give away a total of 23 (that’s right, 23!) ad spaces! That means that 23 lucky readers will walk away with FREE ad space, no strings attached! The spaces being given away range from 200×200 spots to in-post ads and are from bloggers you’ve all heard of and love!
Ad Space Giveaway - The So-Called Homemaker

The rules are pretty simple:

1. Open to everyone, including our out-of-country friends!
2. All entries will be verified. Although we are saving you some time by not asking for your username for Instagram, Bloglovin’, etc., your entry will be verified before you can be declared a winner. If one of your entries cannot be verified, you will be disqualified completely!
3. One ad space per winner. That means there will be a total of 23 unique winners from this giveaway!

Enter below and best of luck to you all!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Thanks to Thrifty Decor Chick for the link up!

Erica
Hi! I’m a proud Army wife and mom to two little girls (ages 1 and 3), and I love sharing our lives with you. Where we’re going, what we’re eating, what’s making our lives more helpful or fun, what we’re wearing, how we’re doing this or that… I truly enjoy sharing it all! I can’t get enough of birthday cake ice cream, weekend sunrise runs, or making my girls belly-laugh. I write almost daily about my family’s lives, and though I like to keep things light, I also share the messy parts too. Welcome! So glad to have you around. 🙂 I’m active on Facebook and Instagram and would love to communicate with you there!




  • Wow they look amazing! I've never heard of gel paint before, I'll have to recommend it to my mom next time I'm home. She's always tinkering around with her house.

  • That door makeover came out awesome!

  • Looks amazing!

  • Emilie Burke

    What a generous giveaway!

  • The doors look awesome!

  • Painting doors is a ton of work! I've only painted the outside portion of two of my doors, but haven't even thought about painting the inside of the doors. Good to know that gel paint works so well!

  • Thank you Emma! I need to do the outside of two doors, but in order to use the gel paint again I need to wait until the temperatures cool down a bit; otherwise they'll probably stay sticky forever with our Kansas humidity. 🙂 I'd highly suggest the gel paint for your interior metal doors though. So quick and easy!

  • Thanks girl!

  • You definitely have good odds at getting free ad space! I found a few of my favorite bloggers through these types of giveaways, so it's fun to be a part of one!

  • Thank you much!

  • Thank you! SO quick and easy!

  • I'd highly recommend this specific gel paint, especially for a project like this. Cheap, easy, and quick! Thank you!

  • Kait

    Isn't it amazing what paint can do?! Your transformation looks so fab, girl!

  • Yes, definitely a good idea to wait until it cools off. Like a total idiot I tried painting our eastern facing garage access door in the middle of the day after the sun had been shining on it all morning. *sigh* Live and learn I guess.