Painting Door Frames + Internal Doors With Dulux Paint

The very last home improvement project we've been working on inside our Jarrah Jungle home is to replace all our internal doors with new internal doors and new handles.

I recently shared a DIY on how to hang doors and today I'm sharing a DIY on how we painted the door frames and doors with a special Dulux paint which can be used to paint skirting boards, door frames, windows, cupboards and doors.

Painting the door frames

I've said it before and I'll say it again because Mr P always corrects me when I want to get all slap happy with the paint brush straight away ....

The most important thing about painting is the preparation beforehand! 

So for our jarrah door frames we used filler to fill in any imperfections, sanded it back smooth, filled and sanded again where needed, wiped it all down clean and then we pulled out the paint brush and started painting!

For the door frames - once they were prepped as above we painted on an undercoat of Dulux Prepcoat - Primer, Sealer and Undercoat, in white. This comes in both water and oil based paint and we chose the oil based as we find it stronger and helps the paint adhere better. It's a bit smelly to work with but the smell disperses quickly after you finish painting and it dries quickly.

Once the undercoat paint was dry we painted the door frames with two top coats using Dulux Aquanamel - Semi Gloss in bright white which is a special paint for doors, windows  and trim. This is a water based paint so easy to wipe up as you go with any spills or drips and being water based it has a really low odour and dries quickly too.

It's fine to use a combination of oil and water based paints as we have.

The first coat of paint always takes the longest as you want to make sure you get really good coverage and the second coat always goes on easier than the first and is a lot quicker to apply too. By the time you're onto the third coat it takes half the time as it glides on easily with really good coverage.

As soon as the white paint went on the frames it brings them to life they look so much better, brighter and fresher.

Painting the internal doors

Now for the doors themselves - we bought the doors already primed and after we trimmed them to fit each doorway they were ready to be painted.

The doors had to be sealed because they were raw wood where we trimmed them.

For this we used the same prepcoat paint as we used on the door frames - Dulux Prepcoat - Primer, Sealer and Undercoat, in white. 

Once all the edges were painted with prepcoat - the inside and bottom needs to be painted first as it's impossible to paint once hung but the outside and top could be painted once hung if you prefer (we did all the edges before hung as it was easier to do them all at the same time).

The doors were hung and then we painted the prepcoat on the front and back of each door using a paint brush to get into all the grooves and taking care to brush out any brush strokes or paint drips before the paint drys. 

We used the same method as the door frames - the entire door was painted first with the prepcoat paint.

It takes about an hour to dry before you can paint again so we would usually do a few doors in a row and then pack the paint away for another day.

Once the prepcoat was on each door we got busy with painting two top coats of paint - for this we used the top coat paint Dulux Aquanamel - Semi Gloss in bright white. 

It takes about 45 minutes to paint each coat on each door and so with three coats of paint in total each door took about two and a half hours to paint.

We painted 9 internal doors in total - four bedrooms, bathroom, hallway, laundry and the powder room.

Over 20 hours of painting doors we split over about a year doing some here and there whenever we had the time (between planning our wedding and getting married!)

What a transformation new doors and a fresh coat of paint has made to the look of the house!

It's really modernized the house and the bright white paint looks clean and fresh.

Once the doors were all painted we put the new handles back on (we took them off to paint as it was easier than taping them up!)

Don't the new doors, paint and handles look great!

Whilst this was a fairly easy home improvement project to tackle it took us over a year to complete only because we painting doors here and there whenever we felt like getting out the paint brush.

This is the last big project for the inside of our Jarrah Jungle house renovations .... I can't believe I'm saying the internal renovations are now complete!

You can check out all our renovations to date on the house tour tab.

What was your last painting project? 


Disclosure: Thanks to Dulux for providing me with this paint for review. I have not received any payment or compensation. As always, all opinions are my own. 


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[All images my own]