Painting a Solid Wood Door

I painted a solid wood door with the help of liquid sander for faster, mess free prep.

I have always hated seeing people paint over beautiful stained wood features in their home. At the same time, I despise the orange look of stained oak. Deciding to paint this basement door was a very difficult decision for me, but I was tired of it being the first thing to catch my eye when I walked into the house every day. It is also the only door in our house that was not painted when we moved in. Ironically, I do have plans to eventually strip the other solid wood doors and stain them, but I intend to leave the basement door painted white so that it blends in with the wall.

Prep

I wish I had a before picture that could really show how shiny this door was. The topcoat over this stain was very glossy and thick. I knew I would need to rough up the surface before painting if I wanted the paint to actually stick. Unfortunately, our sander was still lost in one of our moving boxes, and I absolutely hate hand sanding. Laziness won, and I decided to try out a liquid sandpaper instead. The above linked photo is the liquid sandpaper I ordered from Amazon. Following the directions on the bottle, I saturated a cloth and scrubbed it all over the surface. Be sure to wear gloves and eye protection. I made sure to thoroughly scrub the entire door twice. After the second scrub, the door no longer looked glossy, and I was feeling confident that it was ready for the next step.

Primer

This is not my first time painting stained wood, and the biggest thing I have learned from my past experience is that stained wood loves to bleed through paint, especially white paint. The best way I have found to prevent this is to use KILZ stain blocker primer (linked in the above photo). I recommend applying your primer and paint with a small roller and only using a brush in the grooves. A roller will give you a much smoother finish than using a brush. If you want a really smooth finish you can sand with fine grit sandpaper between coats, but I tend to prefer that items in my home look “rustic” (translation: I’m too lazy to sand). I only did a single coat of primer on this door, but if your first coat seems thin you might need a second primer coat before moving on to paint.

Paint

The final, and most satisfying step is to roll on 2 coats of white paint. As usual, I used a 2 in 1 paint and primer because it gives me the best coverage with fewer coats. The photo above was taken after the first coat of paint. You can see the coverage is very good, but there are still some obviously thin areas. The hardest part of this step is waiting for the first coat to dry before starting the second. Waiting to do that final coat and peel the tape feels like torture, but it’s all worth it when I get to step back and finally see the end result! What a change!

The Update: 4 years later

It has now been over 4 years, and I am still thrilled with the way painting this door made it blend into the background! No one really wants the door to their dark, gross basement to be a feature of their living room. It still makes me cringe to admit that I painted over a stained, solid wood door, but I do believe design-wise it was the correct choice.

You may be wondering, how has the paint held up after using liquid sander to prep? I think the liquid sander works just okay, not amazing. In my opinion, liquid sander is a great shortcut for low traffic areas, but in high traffic areas would not be a good idea. This door rarely gets used, but still has managed to get several deep scratches over the years. The paint holds up much better than it would without any prep, but I think scuff sanding would have been more durable. In the case of this door, I don’t regret using liquid sander for prep. I do wonder if scrubbing the door a third time with the liquid sander would have given me even better results, but I haven’t had a chance to test that theory.