If there is one lesson I learned during my renovation efforts so far, it’s that a little paint can figuratively go a long way. My front yard, while responsibly drought-resistant, is boring and just not nice to look at. At all. Curb appeal? Forget it.

Before…

I decided the easiest way to get a quick win on that front (get it? 😉) was to freshen up the front door and garage door, sporting a faded light brown or tan until that point. The rusty security door didn’t really do anything to improve the picture either, so that turned out to be the first change I made. I ended up putting it on Facebook Marketplace actually and making a few bucks off of it.

With the security door gone I could focus on the front door itself. After filling the holes the bolts left behind and a thorough wash of door and frame, I started with a coat of primer. The washing part took considerably longer for the garage door, I had to do three rounds to finally get rid of all the dust and pollen. There too, I started out with priming it first. Both doors didn’t really have stains or were considerably darker than the new color, but I wanted a high-quality paint job and was hoping that it would let the paint adhere better to the fiberglass and aluminum.

These were the holes the security door bolts left behind. Quite massive.

Fabian helped me priming the front door!

After priming

After priming. I started at the bottom, so I guess I got better along the way?

For the actual paint job, I went with two coats of Dunn & Edwards’ Novelty Navy. Using a foam roller and a high quality angle brush have me pretty good results. So good actually that I even deferred on a third coat of paint. There are plenty of tutorials available on how to properly paint a garage or front door, so I don’t think I need to go into details here. One thing I do want to pass along though is: Don’t be stingy on masking tape for your stucco! While I managed to keep the front door surround free of paint, I ended up with quite a few spill-overs around the garage door.

In terms of bang for your buck, I doubt there are many more projects around your house that let you exceed this one’s. All in all I spent less than $100 on it, between primer, paint, and supplies. And while I’d stop short of calling it a transformation, it is a vast improvement over what it looked like before. Coming home and rolling up that garage door has definitely been a lot more satisfying recently.

Before…

…and after.

After priming

After first coat of paint

Before…

…and after.