We had these gold sliding doors in our dining room and I knew our dining room would look a LOT better if these were just about any color other than gold.
New sliding doors are pricey, so I decided to paint these.
I ran into a few issues as I went, I will share them here so you don’t make the same mistakes as I did… this project also took me a LOT longer than I thought it would… so plan this over a long weekend if you want to knock it out in a few days.
What you need:
- Rust-oleum Spray paint. This is error 1 and error 2 that I made. DO NOT get the store brand cheaper spray paint. IT IS NOT THE SAME. You will go through more cans trying to cover the surface area than needed, and the paint peels off as soon as you touch it. It will not be long lasting, the store brand was a different… just take my advice and do not buy anything other than Rust-oleum. I used about one can (plus a little from a second can) per door… so this project was about 5 cans of the good spray paint (plus I bought two cans of the bad spray paint which was a waste of time and money) CLICK HERE to look at what I got for the project.
- You will need some painters tape. Frog Tape is the best… CLICK HERE . This is also something I skimped on… I bought the blue cheaper tape.. didn’t buy enough so went back for frog tape… made a world of difference in the end. Just go straight to the frog tape for your doors.
- You will need something to completely cover the mirrored or front part of your slider (whatever you don’t want paint on) I used plastic bags and junk mail. You want to make sure that the mirrored surface is COMPLETELY COVERED because the spray paint does sneak under if it isn’t a tight seal (basically if you choose to use junk mail.. don’t just tape the corners to hold it down)
- A drop cloth. I used a tarp. CLICK HERE for the one I used. You can use whatever you want, but the tarp worked well for me.
- A small sample sized amount of black paint (or whichever color you are using) for touch ups. CLICK HERE to see what I used.. and a small paint brush.
I only had space to do one door at a time, which is why this project took me so long. So I removed the door, placed it on the tarp and used bricks we had to hold the door up off the ground by about a foot. You could use books or whatever you have laying around. (Note: whatever you use will get some spray on it) This way I could spray the sides of the doors without touching it.
I spayed on a light coat, let it dry for about 10 minutes and then came back out to spray another light coat. I sprayed each door completely around 6-7 times until I could no longer see gold shining through. By spraying lightweight coats on it and letting the door dry… It left a very smooth finish to the door.
Once the door was dry, I carefully removed the tape, and used a small paint brush and used the small black paint sample I mentioned earlier. The problem with the touch up paint is that you will not have the exact same color as the spray paint… So if you have quite a bit of space to touch up… I would tape the area again and hit it with the spray paint for a consistent look.
Repeat these steps with each door. Each door took me about 5 hours to complete… So I did one a day, this was broken up into two weekends. Also, you will need to paint the track. In my case, the bottom track was cemented into the ground with our tile… I went by with my paint sample and painted the track black. The top header of my track was something I was able to unscrew… so I did… and I included it in my spray paint rotations.
Another note to add, the back of my door is white and gold. Since the doors are mirrored.. I used my sample paint to paint part of the back of the door. (You could see the gold behind the door in the mirror reflection)
Overall this project was not hard, but it was very time consuming. The fact that I wanted to get cheaper spray paint really added more time to this project too. But the doors look AMAZING now. It really changed the room for the better and the paint is holding up well (it has been about two months since I completed these doors)
If you have any questions about any of my projects, feel free to send us an email. Id love to see the end result on your closet doors if you try this out.
Chevy The Boston 