Our front door looked like it had seen better days. It’s a UPVC door and the colour is (was) oak effect, or maybe pine effect, well some wood effect anyway, and the coating was all peeling off, scratched and scuffed.  Something definitely  needed doing to it so we decided we would change it, modernise it and at the very least try and pretty it up a bit.  Now there was nothing wrong with the actual door so we looked into getting it painted professionally because we aren’t really DIYers, actually though to be fair we are getting better. Would you believe, to get a UPVC door refurbished costs about £500?! Well I can think of far more exciting things to spend £500 on, can you?

So with that not being an option, we decided to look into doing it ourselves.  Now a few months ago we repainted our Ikea bedside drawers with some universal paint and they came out brilliantly, so I had the idea of trying to paint the front door with the same range of paint as the chest of drawers and front door had a similar finish. You may like to read How to create a pretty guest bedroom

So first things first (the boring bit) good preparation is key.  (That’s what all painting guides probably say don’t they?)  We sanded down the door to remove any loose flakey varnish or coating and to give a rough surface for the paint to adhere to.

The paint we used is Rust-Oleum Universal paint. The colour we chose is a lovely bluey-grey called Thyme. Painting the door was actually really easy, it goes on lovely and smoothly and gives good coverage. The beauty of this paint is that you don’t need an undercoat.  The door actually looked okay after one coat but we thought it would be better to give it two so we left it overnight and then painted a second coat the next day.  The finish feels really nice, smooth and with a very slight sheen. It almost feels like plastic, that kind of smoothness.

In the meantime we decided to get a new letterbox, door handles and lock and went for a chrome finish, rather than brass, for a change.

(The big white blob above the door wasn’t a mis-hap with the paint, in case you’re wondering, I tried to hide the door number on the photo.)

After leaving the door to dry for a few hours we put on the new door furniture that we had chosen and that was it – job done!

I’m so pleased with how it turned out and think it makes a huge difference to how the house looks.  I’m also really pleased because we did a good job at a fraction of the price it would have cost to get it done professionally.