Making a House a Home: Affordable Garage Door DIY

A few months ago, we moved into a new house and our TO DO list was (and probably still is) a mile long! One of the items on the list was to update the garage doors. The doors were the same color as the siding so they disappeared into the house. We thought that updating the garage doors, along with a few other outside projects, would give the home a much-needed facelift. If you caught my social media stories last month or so, you know we replaced the outdoor light fixtures and painted the shutters.

The final facelift project to tackle was the garage doors. We prefer the look of wooden garage doors, so we started shopping around. Replacing our garage doors (we have a single and a double) will cost a few thousand dollars. With all the other projects happening right now (YAY kitchen), I wondered about getting the look for less…

We decided to paint the garage door with this gel stain (ok, I decided…my husband was nervous!). This would obviously be easiest with new doors that are not installed, but we made it work by using some painter’s tape around the seal of the garage doors.

Step One

Clean your garage door(s). We used a power washer, but a good scrub and rinse would work fine too. Just make sure there is not any debris on the door(s).

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Step Two

Open and STIR your stain with a paint stick or similar. It is very thick and you need to stir until it’s smooth. Do NOT shake it. You may have to stir again if there are chunks at the bottom.

Each can of stain is less than $20. One can is more than enough to cover a double garage door. We barely used 1 ¼ cans to do our double and single doors. We already had painter’s tape and an all-purpose paint brush. Remember that gel stain does not get applied and then wiped off. You just apply and wait for it to dry and seep in. There might be spots you want to touch up at the end to achieve the desired look.

Step Three

The stain dries relatively fast, so I recommend painting one section at a time. For us, that meant each “rectangle” of the door and we painted in vertical strips. I think most garage doors have this design. Start by painting the raised part of your section.

Step Four

Next, paint the edge around your section.

Step Five

Then paint the flat part between the raised sections. You already painted the non-flat edge, which makes this part easier and you can use the flat part of your brush to get a smooth finish.

Step Six

Now paint the area around the interior rectangle section.

Step Seven

To complete the section, I painted the area to the left of the rectangle to make sure the brush strokes (with the “grain”) are consistent.

Progress

The Finished Product

We let the stain dry until it was no longer tacky (overnight) and then we removed the tape.

This DIY project was SUPER affordable and only took a few hours to complete. We transformed our garage doors for less than $50. We love the faux wood finish and it was the perfect solution since we wanted to change the look, but did not necessarily want new doors.

Are you ready to give your house an affordable facelift?

Katie G.