Garage Door Facelift for less than $20

- April 05, 2013

Since the day we moved in I have HATED this garage door.

It just made our house look so boring.

I have always wanted a garage door that has windows and all of the cute details that adds charm and curb appeal to a house. However those charming carriage garage doors cost some major money and replacing a garage door that works just to buy one that looks pretty seems like a pretty big waste to me.
I read about painting fake windows on this blog and decided that I had to try it. After all, it's only paint.
http://foreverdecorating.blogspot.com/2011/04/carrige-house-look-garage-doors.html
Before I read her post I had never noticed that garage door windows always look black. So they are really easy to fake.

Her garage doors were already small rectangular panels which lead easily to small square "windows." My garage door is just 4 flat boards which meant a LOT of measuring but it gave me the flexibility to choose whatever design I wanted.

Today was a beautiful early April day by Buffalo standards (43 degrees and Sunny), I decided to repaint the garage door and then add the details before my husband came home from work (a surprise for him). The way I see it if it looks bad, paint over it.

Here's what I did:

#1 measure everything. The width and height of the door, the half way point, half of that...sketch out on cardboard the window pattern because you want the to be 1/4 of the total width of the door and the same all the way across.

#2 repaint the garage door. (If you need to...my garage door needed this step)

with a new paint job (slightly darker than the white we had before)

#3 trace the windows with a pencil.

(I also flipped the template over to make the curves go the other way.)

#4 Line the pencil lines with Frog Tape to get sharp straight lines (best masking tape around) Don't get cheap and buy a different brand. Trust me. Frog tape gives you the sharpest edge.