Black interior doors (in the basement)

Hello! I’m so excited to show you the progress I’ve made on a BIG project I’ve been working on for days and days and DAYS. I had no clue how long this would take me and I’m still not done!

I’ve been obsessed with black interior doors for years now. I’ve been painting ours over time, a door here and there. I painted our garage door first:

OK, it’s not a real interior door, but it was a door. :)

I’ve also painted the inside of our front door:

That black buffet is getting a new color soon – there’s too much dark going on there for me.

And of course there’s our pantry door and the infamous back door:

If you’re having a crappy day and need a laugh, read this post about painting that one. I can laugh about it…now.

Anyhoo, I’ve become a master at painting doors over the years. I showed you my process here and it doesn’t fail me:

I’ve been determined to get more interior doors painted, so I decided to start in the basement. The doors were already primed and have sat unpainted for about eight months now – here’s how they looked:

Since they were already primed I felt like this would be pretty easy. Easy, yes. Fast? Oh dear Lord, NO.

I started by taking off the hardware:

I just did the knobs because they’re pretty easy to take off. You’ll save yourself some time if you just take them off – taping around a doorknob is a pain and I think it takes more time than just removing them. ;)

As I showed you above, we have paneled doors, so I started with the insets of each panel:

You don’t have to make it perfect, just make sure there aren’t any globs of paint anywhere.

I like to really knock down the paint around the edges on the flat part of the door:

By the way, I do this part with an angled brush. I started out with a smaller one, like a 1 1/2 inch, but found it went MUCH faster with a wider one, about two inches.

Then roll on the rest of the door – I use a small white sponge roller you can get at any hardware store. Here’s the thing – it will look horrible:

Like total poo, for real. Don’t freak out. As long as your paint is decent it will get better and you will not see all the overlap.

My second coat was a fast one – and for this one I used the roller to do the inserts as well:

I knew it didn’t need to be perfect, so as long as there were no globs of paint it was fine.

The second coat makes a HUGE difference!:

I finished off each one by using the brush for the insets one last time (just to get a good finish) and then rolling on the rest again.

I used Sherwin Williams paint and it went on like buttah. No need to sand between coats at all. It’s really an easy project, but with three coats each door, it just takes forever!

I don’t tape off much either – this time I used my Frogtape on the latches (just because sometimes if you don’t get them back in the same exact way they don’t latch right, so I’d rather just tape them off):

And on some of the doors I used some of the green stuff on the trim next to the door:

But on a couple of them this wasn’t needed, it just depends on the door and how well you paint. ;)

I used to use a gray primer on everything I was painting black, but I’ve learned since that it always takes me three coats (with good paint). So one coat of primer wasn’t going to do me much good when I knew I needed two more anyway. It was three coats either way. (And I didn’t need the primer for protective reasons like on a piece of furniture.)

I did both sides of three doors and haven’t finished the other side of a couple of them yet. It takes me about two hours to do each door, so it’s been a process over the past five days or so.

The door to my lovely little storage area door is done front and back:

That dresser is getting painted too, it was moved from the guest room. Yes, I have a lot of black dressers. ;) I used to be obsessed with black furniture! Now I’d rather have natural wood or a color – the black in our house will now be on the doors. (I’ve always said most every room can take one item in black!)

My favorite set of doors is to the laundry room – I made this doorway 36 inches wide on purpose so I could carry large laundry baskets in and out without hitting anything. My great idea ended up costing us a little extra – a 36 inch door was going to take up too much space into the rest of the space when open (these doors are rarely closed). So instead we did a custom door that was cut down the middle:

 

It doesn’t get in the way of the bathroom door and it takes up very little space in the family room area. The spot behind the right door will be our little kitchenette so the door will back up to the cabinets eventually.

There’s a little peek at a big project starting in the laundry, and no we don’t have knobs on those doors yet. Baby steps. :)

I think they look SO sharp in black and it’s safe to say I am in luuuuurve:

There’s a reason all those doors are closed. Disaster areas lurk behind them. :)

Now I need to finish the backs of a couple of them, and do the storage room door in the laundry and I’m done…down here anyway. Next up is upstairs. Because I’ve removed so many doors in this house, that will take about as long as all of them in the basement did!

Here’s one last look – it’s a lot of doors in one small area – more doors than we even have on our main floor! But they make a statement and that’s what I love:

I am not painting the trim, I like the white trim with the doors a lot. If I did the trim I’d want to continue it to the baseboards and I’m a bright white trim kind of girl. (It’s not quite bright white down here just yet – that’s another project for another day.)

I won’t feel like this is really done till I get the last little bits done, so I hope to tackle those tonight. Then I can move on!

And by the way, we went with oil rubbed bronze hardware down here to tie in with the rest of the house, but I think a brushed nickel would be HOT with a black door. And believe it or not – I even think brass looks pretty darn good with them. ;)

(Emily just painted some of her doors black and is embracing the brass!)

Have you painted any doors in your house a different color? Our mud room door is getting a fun color – otherwise they are all going black! By the way, this color is called Graphite from Benjamin Moore -- I had it mixed in Sherwin Williams (eggshell finish in latex paint). It’s part of the color scheme for the basement I showed you here. It’s not a true, deep black, but more deep gray, although it really looks black to me on the doors! Maybe it will look different in natural light?