DIY Screen Door – Part 2

Progress with the screen door has been slow.  I kept messing up and having to backtrack to fix my mistakes, but that’s the beauty of learning.  2 weekends ago I painted the frame.  The outside is black like our other outer doors – I used the same exterior semi-gloss black that I bought for the front door.  It took 3 coats of black to completely cover the primer:

        

       

I decided [I have no idea why] to attach the screen mesh to the frame BEFORE painting the inside white.  The white you see on the frame is the primer.  Darwin made sure the screen was positioned correctly before I stapled it to the frame:

        

        

NOTE TO SELF #1:  DON’T ATTACH THE SCREEN UNTIL THE ENTIRE FRAME IS PAINTED!

After the screen was attached, I trimmed around the edges enough so the molding would cover it.  Then I nailed the primed molding pieces to the frame:

       

NOTE TO SELF #2:  DON’T ATTACH THE MOLDING UNTIL THE FRAME & MOLDING ARE PAINTED!

I didn’t do a great job trimming the screen – it was peeking through all over the place:

       

NOTE TO SELF #3:  TRIM SCREEN BETTER!!!

I decided to use a kitchen knife to gently pry up the molding pieces, then trim the screen better:

        

While the molding was off, I decided to tape the frame & paint it and the molding:

        

Then I taped the black side so I could paint the inner edges white, which was a bitch.  Because of the screen:

       

Once everything was painted, I attached the molding again, this time using my staple gun as a nailer.  So cool!  The DeWalt staple gun I have can be used as a stapler or a nailer [#affiliate], so I went to Home Depot and bought some nails for it.  It did a great job, although I had to use a hammer to knock most of them in deeper:

       

I used wood filler to fill in the old nail holes, as well as the corners where the molding didn’t quite line up.  I employed a kitchen brush to get rid of the excess:

        

Today Darwin made sure the screens were as loose as possible [oy] and once he was done, I painted the wood filler white:

       

All that’s left is to hang it!  Hopefully the weather will clear enough soon for me to do that.