Cleaning and Priming

I got a great start on my latest project which is to paint a garage door to look like wood.  On Friday I cleaned the door real well and then primed it and base coated it.  In the first picture you can see my 'tools' for cleaning.  A 5 gallon bucket, scrub brush on a long handle, scotch brite pad, rubber gloves, and ammonia.  So I first scrub the door down real well with water and ammonia.  Then I put on the rubber gloves and hand scrub the door with the scotch brite pad  and a new batch of water and ammonia.  Then after rinsing the door really well I dry it off with some cotton rags.  At this point its pretty darn clean.

Then I prime it with a gray primer.

After I primed the door and that dried for about an hour I then base coated the door with the golden color you see below.  That's usually enough for one day.  I like to let the paint dry really well before I start to tape off and start the wood graining process.  So today (Monday) in the next picture you can see how I have taped off the top two rows and painted in the wood grain on the center panels.

A close up here will show some taping tips.  The green circled area shows how I tape off the panels but leave the area between them blank.  That way I when the paint dries I can remove that tape and re-tape off basically the same area but as you can see in the blue circled area I have put the tape over what I have painted on the panels exposing the area underneath the previous tape job.  You can see how much bigger the area now is in the blue circled space.  I do it like this because I want to paint that area with a vertical stroke.

In this next photograph you can see the difference between the top row which has gotten 2 passes of wood graining with two different colors, one a medium brown and one a much darker brown.  The photos shows the row beneath it at this point has only 1 pass and that is the medium brown which I paint on first.

So here in the last photograph you can see I got a heck of a lot done for one day.  I painted all 4 rows of panels and the vertical area between the panels to look like wood.  I may be able to finish this job tomorrow but it depends on the rain.  I thought I was going to get rained out today but the rain went all around me and I only got a few little drops.  Tomorrow is 70% chance of rain so who knows if I will be able to get it done or even paint at all.