Current Project-How to paint doors

This is how five of the downstairs doors and ten of the upstairs doors looked when we bought the house in October 2009 with only primer factory coat on most doors. After my brother Len was here for two weeks and re-adjusted many of the doors to fit perfectly, and our last group of guest were gone, I began painting doors on Wednesday, February 3, 2010.

I took the hardware off three doors, and Steve and I took the doors off their hinges and carried them to the garage.

We put them on the top of a huge cardboard box (from our IKEA bookcases that we assembled), which sat on top of another two unhung doors, which laid on the two saw horses in the garage bay with no cars. I used a small roller and brush to give each side a coat of paint, then went in the house with my paint and brush and touched up baseboards, door trim, and other doors. I would apply a second coat about two hours later. After lunch, Steve would help me turn the doors over and I would do the same process for two coats, allowing them to sit four or five hours to "cure" before we hung them back in their proper frames.

Here are the first three doors finished, with the hardware installed. You see the powder room on the right side, and the downstairs guest room and bath doors on the left.

To remind you again how "dingy" the doors looked before, I compare the upstairs Toy Room and Craft room to the newly painted and finished downstairs office:

I did eleven doors in four days. I have two more (the toy room/craft room) to do tomorrow and the two from the master bath to finish on Tuesday, just in time for our next guests to arrive on Wednesday. By then, I will have finished touching up all the paint on walls (beige) and trim (white) in the entire house. Now my house looks like "I" painted it! Do you need a room painted? I hire out!

(I did paint the hinge side of our master bedroom door that Len had to sand down to fit right. Rather than take it down, I took my brush to the door, the way I have painted doors in the past. No longer! The only way to paint a door properly is to remove it from the hinges and lay it flat. No paint runs, no smears on hardware or hinges or paint on the flooring.)