Gel staining metal garage doors for a faux wood look!

I am not artistic by any means, and I was able to make my doors look exactly like I wanted to with some paint and gel stain!  

Read on to learn what I did...

        The doors are were gray when I started this project.       They were originally white and I painted them a couple years ago.  

   After base coat of Grecian gold (neighbors thought I was nuts)
 

                                        Finished product

I have been wanting to do this for a while.  I had a new front door installed and also had stone put on the front of the house to replace the siding.  It looks so much better than before, but I really wanted my garage doors to match the front door.  Of course, I didn't really want to fork out about $5,000.00 or so for new garage doors because mine really were very functional, I just wanted them to look like wood.  After watching numerous do-it-yourself videos, I finally felt confident that I was ready to tackle this project.  

I took a picture of my front door on my phone with me to Lowes and compared it to the stain charts that they had.  I knew my door had more reddish brown tones instead of the greyish and blackish browns that some had, and the chestnut seemed the closest match.  So chestnut it was!

 

I brought it home and tried a spot on the gray color of the door that I currently had, and I could tell it would not have the undertones like my actual wooden front door.  It was more of a grayish brown and was pretty obvious that it would not match at all, so back to Lowes I went.  I had seen a video where one lady used a yellow base, and the doors turned out closer to what I was wanting.  This was the paint I ended up picking.  I even walked out to the garden center to have the natural light because the lighting inside and at the paint areas make paint look sooo different sometimes.  I ended up getting what turned out to be the perfect color for my project.  I got the lightest color on this strip.  Grecian gold. Also it is flat and has the primer in it.  I wanted to get pretty much the best paint I could get so it would last!

So basically you want to paint your doors whatever the base coat is going to be, let it dry preferably a day, then apply the gel stain over it.  I used about half of the gallon of paint, and one quart of stain, and just a tad more.  I was glad I had purchased 2 quarts because I really needed the little bit extra. I painted my doors on a very sunny and warm Saturday and then stained them on the following cloudy Sunday.  For the gel stain, it needs to be either super cloudy, or you need to be in the shade.  You do not have as much time to work with it in the sun, therefore I would not recommend trying it because it just dries too fast to be able to work with it.  

Here are the brushes I used for the stain. The one on the left is a cheap brush that I cut the bristles a little over half way off.  I didn't remember to get a chip brush at Lowes, which is just a brush that looked like it had gotten chewed on by a rat to me. haha.  So I cut an old brush I had and it worked great!  Then I had a softer, nice brush for when I needed to clean up around any edges.  I used the rough chopped off brush for about 95% though, it was great to give it a rough look.  You don't want to have nice perfect lines.    

You basically want to work in squares like below.  Fill in the square really good and make sure all the divets are covered and lines are filled in, then blend each square together with the next with long even horizontal strokes.

I hope if you try this, you have much success.  Share questions and before and afters with me!!!