A front door is an important part of the first impression that your house gives. When we decided to paint ours red, I was so happy with the extra pop that it gave to our curb appeal. But because we hardly ever come in and out of this door, we’ve kind of neglected it. So a few weeks ago, we decided to finally finish up that paint job and fix the screen that was quite the eye sore.

At first glance it doesn’t look too bad. But when you get up close to it, you can see that the screen is badly faded, way too loose, and just flat out dirty. Even the metal grate is looking pretty sad.

And of course, the inside of the door needed some new paint! We were in such a hurry when we painted the screen door that we decided to skip the inside until later.

As you can see, it was time for a makeover! Here are the steps to re-screen any door…

First, take the door off the hinges and lay it flat. Luckily we were able to put down a sheet and do this in our foyer because it was a bajillion degrees outside.

Pretty gross, right? Next remove all hardware and set aside. Then start removing the interior trim pieces. Once the trim is removed, the screen will be free for you to pull up.

Just look at how gross this door was! We even had to use a handheld vacuum to get all of the dirt and debris out of the crevices.

Instead of painting over the old, nasty white, we decided to remove all layers of paint. In total, there were about 6. We used heat guns to remove the paint. (Side note: if you’ve never used a heat gun, you should. It’s so much fun to watch the paint start to bubble and pop up! #nerdalert)

We’re not sure how old this door is, but we know it’s been on the house since at least the ’50s. We feel pretty sure that this wood has not seen the light of day in over 60 years!

Next, we pulled out our favorite front door paint and went to town! By the way, Modern Masters front door paint is amazing…we did 3 coats on our front door and 3 coats on the front of our screen door, and still had over half of the quart left! Plus, it hasn’t faded at all. (Our color is “Passionate.”) We also gave the metal grate a coat of black Rustoleum.

After letting the paint dry overnight and removing all of the staples (there were 876,546 just so you know), we were ready to lay in our new screen. We found the screen at Lowe’s and then had them cut the sides to the width we needed. We made sure to pull the screen as tight as possible, then used a staple gun to hold everything in place.

Finally, we cut the screen at the opposite end of the door, and stapled it in place.

The last step was adding new trim to hold the screen in place. We picked up 4 trim pieces that fit from Lowe’s, cut them to size, and painted them to match the door. Handy husband nailed them in place and voila! Finished!

Finally, our front door is complete! The new unfaded tight screen really makes such a difference. It’s one of those things that you don’t really realize you need until you see the end result.

Pretty easy, right? Next up is painting our side doors and back doors…we’ve still got plenty of paint left!

Have you ever re-screened a door? What color is your front door? What projects are you working on lately?