Camouflaging the Dog Door

I’ve been waiting for months for the outside temperature to drop below 90 degrees so that I could paint our exterior doors. I could have painted them during the hottest temperatures of the summer, but that would require keeping the door open for awhile and that defeats the purpose of getting our AC fixed. I’m pretty sure I would have melted too.

It’s okay if you want to feel sorry for me.

Last week our daytime temperatures held in the low 70s, so I knew it was time to paint!

We have a beautiful back door. Except someone ruined it by installing a dog door. This is nothing against dogs, it’s just my personal feelings on beautiful doors. My name is Annisa and I speak for the doors. 😉

Our door was so ugly I don’t even have pictures except this in-progress iPhone shot. It was faded, scratched and there were random staples stuck to it. You can still see a patch of the faded black to the left of the creamy dog door. Even with the faded paint, the dog door stuck out like a sore thumb.

Since I wasn’t going to restore the door to its original glory by taking out the dog door, I thought it would be worth a shot to paint the plastic components of the dog door.

What could it hurt?

SO much better, right?

I considered spray painting the plastic parts of the door, but I couldn’t get the slider part to come out and I really didn’t want to break it. Fixing something we don’t use would be more than a little irritating. Plus, I wanted the paint colors to match.

If you’re going to paint your dog door, I’d definitely suggest using a paint that is approved for use on plastic. That will give you a fighting chance against the wear-and-tear the door is likely to receive – especially if you have a dog.

It was a little tricky painting the sliding door part of the dog door since I had to work around the clear plastic flap. Totally worth it though!

I do not know how durable paint is on plastic if you use a dog door regularly and I don’t intend to find out! I’m still getting used to the idea of having a cat.

I’d imagine, however, that you might have to touch-up the bottom of the painted frame more often. To me, that’s still better than looking at an eyesore all the live long day.

We had a nasty screen/storm door attached here as well that we never used, so I took this opportunity to have Handy Husband remove it. Even with the threshold that needs some cleaning/painting and the storm door frame still in play, I am so much happier with how it looks out here. This is the door we use 99.9% of the time and this quick update camouflaging the dog door goes a long way toward boosting my…uh, mental well-being. 😉

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