Garage Door Makeover

Who doesn't love Carriage Garage Doors?!

Who can afford Carriage Garage Doors?! Millionaires!  That's who!   Okay that's an exaggeration, but seriously those things are expensive people!!  I did a little research when Katie mentioned to me that she really loves that style of garage doors and she wants to have them someday.

Back story tangent: We have a house across the street that went on the market the day we moved in to our house.  We quickly secured an appointment to see inside of it because we are some nosy people, folks.  True Story.  I LOVED THAT HOUSE!!  I was so mad that it went on the market RIGHT AFTER we got the keys to ours.  But it was rough.  Of course I saw all the things that I could do to it, but Katie saw a money pit.  Anyhow, it didn't matter we had our house and we love it, but some investors snatched up that house after a few months (and a few drops in price DANG IT) and pretty soon we had a full fledged remodel going on next door.  They did a wonderful job (although they didn't do much to that hideous kitchen even when I suggested they put in an island, what are they amateurs?!) and that house looks wonderful now (if you like that sort of thing).  It was eventually bought by nice young couple that I have declared our frenemies.  We do not compliment their house without saying, "I mean if you're into that sort of thing".  And they have carriage garage doors (bitches).  Anyways that's what lead to Katie announcing one day that she really likes that look.

Not to be one upped by the neighbors I immediately took to Pinterest. Surprisingly, I found just a few pins about how to turn your plain run of the mill garage doors into faux carriage garage doors.  And I was on board!  We were going to be painting the house exterior soon so why not give the doors a makeover too?  Well, I'm here to tell you it works!  Friends and family stopped by the day I did it.  Neighbors came over and I've seen my fair share of slow drive bys with people pointing at our house.  Yay!!  My best compliment?  Our sweet neighbor lady, Pat, telling me that she thought it was real wood (this is no joke we had to convince her) and that she even liked ours better than the neighbors that had the real thing! Score!  Point to Erica!

So here's how to makeover your garage doors.  First off, we have plain old vinyl insulated garage doors, that by the look of them are pretty new.  I'm sure this would work just as well on any regular garage doors but I just wanted to give you a feel of what my canvas was. (Pardon the crappy cell phone photo.)

Then we went and bought Minwax Gel Stain and a cheap $3 brush (because I knew I was going to be throwing it away.  I hate oil based stains and paints. So messy.) Home Depot: $12 for the stain

And decorative garage door hardware.  Home Depot: $19

And then finally an exterior urethane coat to protect my hard work with the stain. Home Depot: $18

Then I went to town.  First, I cleaned the doors.  Ours, like I said, were pretty new so I just wipe the dirt and grime off of them with a bath towel.  If your doors are older you might want to go so far as to hose them down and scrub.  I found two pins about staining vinyl garage doors on Pinterest and one said to work around the squares and then horizontally across the panel and the other told me to follow the wood grain that was stamped into the finish on our vinyl.  I went with a combination of both.  I worked the stain in the vertical lines and then went over all of it with horizontal strokes so I was following the "grain".  Our doors are made up of four horizontal panels that stack on top of each other, but I worked a square at a time moving across one panel and then down to the next.  When you're staining you only need to dip the very tips of your brush's bristles into the stain.  Don't get a whole gob on there.  The gel stain is wonderful to work with because it's allows you to "pull" the product around on the surface.  So you can spread it out if it's too thick and you can add more on top if you're not covering the white enough. (For two doors I only used about 1/4 of the can, that's how little I needed)

Doesn't it look like wood?!  The cheap brush worked amazingly, because it had very coarse bristles which created a wood grain look.  The variance in color that you're seeing is actually our white vinyl door showing through and if you stood in front of the door you would definitely be able to tell that I had created this effect and we did not in fact have wood garage doors.

So I'm not going to lie to you, I had never done this before and there wasn't any way to test it out.  I mean do you have some vinyl laying around?  So I had to just go for it and I was freaking out when I started to do the first square.  By the time I got to this point, however, I knew this was going to be awesome.

So I have two doors and I feel like it's important that when doing a faux finish the person who started it finish it, because we all have such different brushstrokes, so while Jarred, Katie and our good Samaritan friend, Devon, worked on finishing the exterior painting and planting that was going on I worked on the doors alone.

Door one down.  After that first door, the second was easy! Now I can't show you pictures of putting on the  clear coat but you'll need to use a good fine bristle brush for this because you want to cover REALLY well.  I mean slap it on there.  You're going to need this clear coat.  Don't skip this step!  You're putting gel stain on a surface that can't absorb it so it scraps off at the slightest touch.  I did one coat because I made sure to cover everything in a super thick coat, but I probably should have done two coats and if I had I would have definitely used the entire quart.  I also didn't take pictures of installing the hardware, but it comes with instructions and is pretty simple.  A small drill bit for the holes and put in the screws and you're done.  If you're new to DIY you might want to measure and use a level to make sure you're getting it on there straight, but at this point in my DIY career if I can't eyeball a straight line I might as well quit.  Here is the finished product!

We're amazingly pleased with how it turned out and from now on I will never suffer another plain white garage door on any house I live in.  You can choose whatever color will go best with your palette.  We choose Hickory, because we really wanted something rustic and rich looking.  And if you're looking at replacing your garage doors, a simple white vinyl one like ours runs anywhere from $225 to $325 from what I've found where as a carriage garage door runs anywhere from $2000 to $5000.  This makeover cost Katie about $70 and as our neighbor Pat says it looks much better!

DIY note:  You will not be able to do this in a day.  I let the stain cure for a full day before doing the clear coat.  The clear coat I let dry for a couple hours before I put on the hardware.  If I was a more patient person I would let the clear coat dry for a couple hours, do a second coat and then 24 hours later put on the hardware, but well, I'm not.  As my father would say: I'm just plain rammy.

Also, you may notice that in the earlier photos the edges didn't look that clean.  I was going to remove the trim around the doors so I could get the whole door and save the trim from a mess, but I soon discovered that the trim is not so easy to remove (very unlike trim inside your house), so I left it on and stained around it.  I got stain on the trim put it's an easy fix.  When you're done staining roll up your garage door and paint the trim your trim color.  If nothing is touching your garage door while suspended from the ceiling then leave it open to let the door and trim dry.  Easy!