One more black door

Hey there! How are you this fine day? Preparing for another snow storm like us? Yeah. I’m actually kind of looking forward to be snowed in for another day or so, but after that – done. I’m sure we’re not though. :)

This weekend I continued a project that’s been a long time coming. I’ve always loved the look of black interior doors in a house and started with our own home in the basement just over a year ago:

I figured that would be a great place to start to see if I did indeed love them. Indeed I did. :)

So I’ve put this off for a year now because, honestly, it takes me forever to do one door. I planned to get two done this weekend and just did one because it takes me SO LONG.

I started on the main floor with the powder room door:

Excuse the cat. There’s ALWAYS a cat. She was sleeping on the heating vent. :)

So I don’t take the doors off the hinges to paint them. Our doors are crazy heavy and you need to be able to do both sides, so I think it’s actually easier to leave them up. I take the door knob off but cover the hinges. This time I figured out an easier way to cover them:

I just put a strip of Frog Tape over each one, then used a razor to cut out around them. You’ll want to kind of push the edges of the tape down around the hinge. I still had to touch up a little bit but it really did make it easier.

I won’t go through all the how to of painting a door again because I shared all of that here. But I will say you NEED to at the very least do some checking to see if your door is painted in latex or oil-based first. (You can see how in that post.)

In most cases it will be oil so you need to prime first with a good shellac primer. I used this:

I usually get it tinted in gray – ultimately I still had to do three coats of black but it does help sometimes. The thing is – latex doesn’t cover oil-based paint well. Allison over at House of Hepworths shared her DIY disaster because her doors were painted with latex over oil and the latex didn’t stick. Like literally…peeled off.

To be safe, prime. Not just a latex primer, an oil-based primer. You’ll thank me. :)

Like I said, it took me forever, but I absolutely LOVE it:

It’s not so bad when you’re working on one side of the door – but then you realize you have the whole other side to do so it kind of takes a while. :) Maybe I’m just a slow painter, who knows, but it will take me years at this rate.

I like to take my time because unlike baseboards or even some walls, I feel like the doors are something you really SEE, you know?:

I did one coat of tinted primer and then three coats of black. The paint color is called Graphite from Benjamin Moore and I had it mixed at Sherwin Williams (a little cheaper) in an eggshell finish. The Graphite color is really a super dark gray, not a black. But it sure looks black to me. :)

I have noticed in the basement we do see scuffs occasionally, but they wipe right off with a wet or dry rag. It’s nothing that bothers us. I’ll have to see how this door does, since it gets so much use.

Here’s a view from inside the bathroom:

My lovely oil-rubbed bronze hardware gets lost on it a bit but it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make. I love them so very much. It’s just a classic look to me that makes the white trim stand out even more.

Now I have five doors done in the house and only have nine more to do! I’ll be done in ten years! (And I’ve taken down five doors in the house so that doesn’t include those.)

For now I’ll enjoy one more done:

The painting is not really that bad – sometimes good, mindless work is just what I need. Next up I want to replace all that trim (there are three doorways right there) with more of the craftsman trim like on the new back door: