Tenth in a Series on Basement Door Renovation

You can probably guess from the number of posts in one day (a personal record, I believe...), that I had a Big Weekend.  And you would be right. 

After sanding, I spackled all the scratches and holes in the door, of which there were quite a few.  There were a lot of small staples that had been put in the door - maybe there was cardboard over the window?  Who knows.

In the picture to the left, you'll notice (if you haven't already) that the door and its trim is actually a pale yellow.  Plus, the cement block walls in this part of the basement are the same color.  And there is a powder room in the house whose walls are the same color!  There must have been a big sale on 5 gallon containers of yellow paint.  It's awful, in my opinion, but I am slowly but surely eradicating it! 

There are also some other spots in the house where they likewise used an awful green, which I have attacked as well.

In the picture above, the yellow color actually makes it easier to see where I spackled, since those spots are white and not yellow.  I also made a lot of spackling dust, which you can see.  I vacuumed that up so it wouldn't wind up on the new finish.

Now it's mask, mask, mask.  I can't remove the one big deadbolt, since it has those 'unremovable' screw heads on it, so I just carefully mask around it. 

This is the outside of the door and the lock for the deadbolt.  If I haven't said this before, I hate paint on fixtures, so I usually apply some extra tape and then use an X-Acto to trim right to the edge of the fitting.  Call me crazy, but I prefer 'attention to detail.'

Here's the inside of the door, sanded, filled, masked, and wiped clean ready for primer.  Is that yellow awful or what?  It's actually not quite that brightly colored - the light made it seem worse, but it's still bad.

But armed with some Kilz primer, I have at it.

And the door after 2 coats of primer.  Much better, and encouraging. 

Now I need to go watch some motor racing.