Giani Wood Look Paint Kit for Front & Interior Doors (English Oak)

Let me start out by saying- I’m a full time working mom, living in a 50% finished home, with a limited budget and skill set. This side of the door took me at most 3 hours total to finish. I painted the interior side of our door as a test before moving outside, after seeing the results I’ll be doing every single exterior door we have 🥹❤️ A few things to note: - to do this one side of the door, I only used about 50% of the product. There is easily enough left over to make the door darker and maybe even enough to do another side! - I saw a lot of comments saying the provided mitt was too large and some people had trouble with that. Personally I have small hands and I had no problems! I just cautious to NOT use the thumb portion of it, and I really only used the top part of the mitt. - Keep a dry paint brush handy!! Absolutely saved my booty trying to keep straight lines with the “wood grain” on the inlays. After you’ve used the mitt in the correct directions, go back in with the tip of the paint brush to smooth out your lines and remove any globs of extra paint. But make sure the brush is dry! - Originally I was going to go with the honey oak color, but decided to buy English oak after looking at all the reviews. The color definitely changes with each coat of step 2! I like the vintage “orangey oak” tones, and liked the first coat (first picture) but decided the wood grain wasn’t defined enough so I went back in for another (2nd picture). Glad I did but be aware if you don’t like the golden brown tones, I’d do 4 total coats. - WATCH YOUR TAPE LINES! I didn’t line up my tape properly when doing the individual wood directions, and I can definitely tell. But still looks wonderful! - TRUST THE PROCESS. Honestly I thought this was going to be the kind of project where you spaz out trying to get the lines perfect. But in reality I was able to do 1-2 swipes and fix up problems areas with the dry paint brush. This was WAAAAY easier than I expected. Please buy this! It will make you feel like you can fix up anything 🥹

This kit is incredible. I’m definitely glad i read the reviews because the tips and tricks were helpful. My ONLY negative is that we waited more than the recommended hour to tape and the tape did peel up a few spots so i had to do some touch ups. I do agree with other reviewers that the glove is really bulky but we managed fine with it. I cut off the thumb at the end to use for touch ups. The stain coat wipes away easily if you go a little over your tape which was helpful when trying to make sure i got a crisp line. I’m a little nervous about it taking 7 days to cure since we use the door everyday but hopefully it doesn’t get nicked or scratched. We aren’t done yet as i still have to repaint the trim and clean things up but here is what it’s looking like so far. We did 2 coats of the stain to get the darker finish and since our door has a lot of glass we were able to use one kit for both sides of the door!

We are so happy with how our door turned out! This kit gave us amazing results, and we'd absolutely recommend it. If you're thinking about using it, here are a few tips that made a huge difference for us. First: Don't expect this to be a one-hour project (like I did!). It took us the better part of the day because we wanted to do it right. We carefully taped off every area, applied thin coats, let each one dry completely, and repeated the process. Taking our time definitely paid off—the finished result looks so much better because we didn't rush. ••Biggest tip: Cut the glove! The glove included in the kit was way too big. I cut off the bottom half, folded the thumb inside, and secured it around my wrist with a small elastic hair tie. It fit perfectly and made it so much easier to control while applying the finish. Even my boyfriend, who has much larger hands than I do, preferred using it this way. ••Tip #2: For all the detailed grooves and indented panels on the door, I cut the thumb off the glove and slipped it over two fingers, securing it with another hair tie. It worked perfectly for getting into all the little crevices and gave us much better coverage than using the full glove. My last piece of advice is to be patient. Let each coat dry before adding the next one, and use smooth, even strokes instead of constantly going up and down over the same spot. Trust the process and don't rush it. We absolutely love how our door turned out, and the extra time and attention to detail made all the difference. If you're willing to be patient, this kit can give you beautiful results!

Color: I chose the Honey Oak color for my back door since the entryway flooring was honey oak vinyl. I felt the base color was very light and slightly pinkish. The stain color is OK, but I think the contrast between base and stain (I refer to it as stain, but it is really a type of glaze that creates the wood grain look) is too great and a less than perfect application is very noticeable. I wasn't totally pleased with the results, but intrigued enough to try a different color. I chose English Oak this time. The base wasn't that much darker, but it had a warmer tone and the stain was much darker. Door: Essentially, the door I was working with was in pretty sad shape and not worth too much trouble. Layers of paint collected in panels that couldn't be easily sanded had to remain and I couldn't remove the door or knobs in fear that it could not be rehung properly or locks function. Removing the door is not necessary, but definitely remove hardware if possible. Application: I learned alot from my first attempt! 1. Base coat is easy, just straight painting. Directions say to pour half into a tray, but a little goes a long way and I just used it straight out of the can. Less waste/clean-up. 2. Taping for the staining is key. If you have a panel door, you will stain in two directions. Instructions say to tape out horizontal panels, stain/dry and then vertical panels, stain/dry. I felt the inset panels looked messy when the whole panel was done horizontally. I took an extra step to tape out the vertical and horizontal sections of the panel and created the look of a mitred corner(I did this in the window corners also). Even though it's a crappy door, it made a difference. 3. The graining mitt is huge! As a woman I don't have a small hand, but I was swimming in it and it was hard to control. I tucked the thumb to prevent it from creating unwanted strokes in the finish and I only applied stain directly to the end of the mitt (not the whole palm as instructed). The instructions say to dampen the mitt in water and wring out the excess. It was very difficult to wring it enough and the stain got watery and dripped excessively. Learning from this I only lightly damped the one side of the mitt I used. 4. Use quick light strokes. Instructions say 2-3 coats depending on desired effect. I used four. (I might have done 5, but I was low on stain because I had also refinished the beadboard under the back door overhang. Looks great and only used 3 coats) The first couple coats might look a little messy, but as it gets darker with additional coats there is less contrast and it starts to look more natural. It dries fast, but with the extra coat I wanted to be sure the taped corners were dry so I did my vertical and horizontal sections on separate days. All said and done I am fairly pleased with the results, but I also accept it for what it is, FAUX!! I don't feel it would be worthy of my front door, but I am considering the garage door version. The kit is loaded with everything you need. It's too recent to really judge the durability, but seems pretty good so far.

20/10. This stuff is the bees knees. I spent a lot of prep time because the door was in pretty bad shape. I couldn’t have asked for a better result. I bought the rubber stamps but couldn’t figure out how to make them look good. Completed this with just the kit.

We have never had these issues and have been in the home with the same door for over 35 years. We painted our back door using this kit. We followed the directions very specifically. The back door is protected by a storm door. The paint bubbled up the very next day. As the days continued, it bubbled even more. Now the paint is sticking to the door frame and we’re having to sand portions of the door. I did get a replacement kit but after seeing how bad the door looked after a week, I decided I didn’t want to go through all of the prep again and take the chance this will happen again. So I returned it to Amazon. I’d highly recommend using paint that is made for an exterior door. I would not recommend wasting your time or money. Now we have to sand all of this off and repaint the door with a different paint.

I read through alot of the comments and used some of the tips along with following the directions and it was very easy and I completed the project in one evening. It was going really well and looked better than what some others posted until there were 2 horizontal sections on my door that the stain essentially wouldn't stick. By the time I got it to mostly cover those two areas, it lost the flow of looking like real wood. Still looks great from far away or a quick pass through the door.

Best kit EVER. I followed the recommendations of several people and the instructions very carefully to get flawless results. Tips: -Do step one let that dry for longer than an hour. -use glove to do first coat, then for second coat use wood grain tool, then used glove for coat 3 & 4 to blend grain look - cut thumb of glove for beveled edges and makes it easier to hold the gloves since it’s big -be precise with your tape lines, it’s worth it to be extra careful Read through the top reviews to get as many tips!