I just spent the best $57 of my life.
We recently just had our entire house painted and we turned the exterior from beige to white (I can hardly wait, I’m bouncing out of my seat excited to show you the “before” and “afters” of that project…coming soon!). But we were left with beige garage doors on our newly painted white house, and I was at a loss of what to do with them. As part of our exterior makeover we had swapped out our original doors for some gorgeous stained fiberglass ones, so I knew I wanted to mimic that look. But buying and installing two brand new garage doors was not in the budget.
So how do you change a painted garage door to mimic a stained woodgrain garage door?
This is what my garage doors looked like in their “before” state. They are woodgrain fiberglass doors with a texture to them. I loved the windows that were in the doors, but they looked a bit boring and beige. I was racking my brain to figure out a way to update these doors to make them look a bit more high-end. Then I hit paydirt when I found out about gel stains. Do you know about these?? They changed my world! They are meant for exterior use, can be used on fiberglass, and can be used over a painted surface. Bingo! Three for three. This was how I was going to knock-off the look of expensive wood doors with just a little DIY trick.
So I immediately bought this Miniwax Gel Stain in the “Walnut” finish from Amazon for $17 for a quart. (*This quart ended up covering both garage doors with some leftover.) Oh, and you like that dent in the door? That was from the time my hubby backed into the garage door. Oops.
First I wiped down the doors to get rid of the dirt and debris. Then I started in the corner and painted on the gel stain with a 3″ paintbrush. I’ll be honest, it was tricky to work with at first. It is pretty goopy and it took awhile to get the coverage right. Gel stains are much thicker than a regular stain so at first the coverage was pretty uneven at first. But after about half a door I started to get the hang of it! If you try it yourself, make sure you paint with the grain of the door in large sweeping strokes. This is what it looked like at first:
It took me about 30 minutes to do each garage door. This is what it looked like after one coat of stain. Because of the grain of the door, the first coat did leave some uncovered spots. I had to use my brush to really fill in some of the indentations from the grain. You can see that after one coat, it still looked fairly blotchy. Okay, I’m a little nervous at this point and I keep telling myself that I can always paint back over the door if I totally screwed up this DIY project…
But I waited the six hours the can told me to wait, and added a second coat of stain. The second coat went on much faster since I knew what I was doing this time around. The second coat helped even out the brush strokes and filled in the gaps that didn’t get covered the first time around. Okay, I’m totally feeling better at this point.
All said and done, the whole project took about three hours. I don’t have photos of the final step, but be sure to apply a CLEAR COAT FINISH when you are done. I used this Miniwax clear urethane in a satin finish, you can find it HERE. This will help protect your stain from the elements. And I’m SOOOO happy with how it turned out! So here is how it looked like after two coats:
And as I told my four-year-old, we also added “jewelry” to the door. Again, from Amazon, I bought two sets of carriage style hardware, one for each door. Each set cost only cost $20, and the best part? It is MAGNETIC, so that means no holes or drilling into your garage doors! I literally popped these out of the package and had them on the door in 60 seconds flat.
Here is the final look! This whole project took three hours and $57. ($40 for the carriage door hardware and $17 for the Gel Stain)
I think the makeover makes these doors look so much more high end, and now they blend with the rest of the doors on our house. I love, love, love the new rich stain and the added bling of the hardware. This is an easy beginner-level project that almost anyone can tackle, I promise.
Give it a try, and show your garage doors the love they deserve!
Love free design ideas and peeks into Real Postbox Projects? Let’s be friends on Facebook and my new fav Instagram (yes, I know I’m super late to the game on THAT one!). And I’m getting pinning elbow over on Pinterest, we can play there too!
Bonnie says
It looks great! Where did you find the magnetic hardware aka jewelry? Did this time/cost include the inside too? Thanks!
PostboxDesigns says
HI Bonnie, I found all of the hardware on Amazon! I did two coats on each garage door so it probably took me about 4-5 hours total (over two days)…but it was a gorgeous day and I did it while my kids played in the front yard! 🙂 So glad I did it!
Fred says
Thanks for sharing this. I have been planning to renovate my garage door but I am tight on budget.
Carl says
Never thought $57 can do this such repair! Thanks for sharing.