Start to Finish, Painting a Garage Door To Look Like Wood

I finished up another garage door project this week.  This one was created with  muted wood tones.

Surface prep is the most important fist step of any painting project.  So I clean the door with soap and water and a scrub pad.  My tools of the trade in the photo below.  

After I clean the surface of the door really well and then dry it off I apply the primer.  For the primer I use a product called 'The Gripper'.  I use the gray based gallon and have them add 2 onces of black tint and 2 onces of raw umber tint to it.  You can add up to 7 onces of tint to the gray gripper.  I do that to get a nice darker warm gray.  The gray it comes in stock is gray but a light gray and comes off with a blueish tone to it.  That's why I add the raw umber which is a dark brown.  I use that to warm it up.

This door has the dreaded window row at the top.  It typically adds 4-5 hours more to painting the garage door like wood to have to deal with the window frames around these 8 windows in the top row.

Also in this next photo you can see how I have already applied the base coat of paint on the door.

The next photo is of the windows completed.  They came out great but a time bandit.

I really like these little stools to set the paint tray on.  The next photo shows how I have my set-up when I am working on the garage doors.

 This next shot is a look at how I tape off the panels on each row.  It also shows how I start to lay out the grain lines.

The close-up next shows the completed project.

Here is the completed garage door again.  Notice how nice the wood tone matches the rain gutters over it.  Coincidence?