Front door - Faux Staining

So the front door I was excited about because it was a birthday present and we were told it was solid wood.  Well, it is solid wood...underneath the veneer.  I have been having some tough luck with veneer lately.  Anyway, I did some research and found an idea on Pinterest on how to do faux staining.  The original post I got this idea from was Lovely Crafty Home, who painted the door followed by using a gel stain.  I had never heard of gel stain before, to be honest it reminded me of pudding.  But here was my experience with it.

Here was the original door to the house.

And this was my new door, what a great birthday gift!

I got the recommended paint from the blog post which was Glazed Pecan by Behr, I bought it at home depot along with the gel stain from Minwax and a few other odds and ends I thought I may need.

I painted two coats of glazed pecan on each side of the door.  Like the other blogger, I also had to suffer through a couple weeks of the outside of the door being orange.  Needless to say it turned some heads...and not in the way you would want.

I did one coat of gel stain on one side of the door prior to the new door jam and door being hung.  Wouldn't you know it, my luck I ended up staining the inside of the door instead of the outside by accident, that's what resulted in my neighbors gawking for a bit.

Now on the label it said to let the stain dry for at least 8 hours, must have been the humidity at the time because it took over two weeks to dry.

I finally got to do the outside stain to the door which took a few days to dry.

After it dried I did what was recommended on the post and used a UV polyurethane on the door.  Note about UV polyurethane: When I opened the container I was extremely surprised that it was a grayish-brown color.  It went on just fine though, so don't be scared when you see that!

We also put new trim in by the door which I used regular stain on versus gel stain.  This picture was in the middle of staining, I also followed this up with a coat of UV polyurethane.

Looks much better I think.

I also got a snapshot of the inside of the door after it was polyurethaned.

I'll update more once the floors have been refinished, followed by moving in my furniture!