Battle of the Rust

I did it!  I conquered the rust spot on our side, exterior door!  Well, as it goes with rust, time will tell if I really got rid of the problem permanently but for the past week we've seen no signs of intruding rust. 

This is what I started with:

(Sorry for the bad pictures...the door really is white, but I forgot to white balance the camera before I took them.) 

It was a just a little bitty spot but every time we walked in that door it drove us nuts as it was right at eye level.  Plus, we want to sell a 'perfect' house so it's away with any and all imperfections...so, bye, bye rusty. 

This was my plan of attack:

First I did some online research on how to remove rust on metal doors.  The best remedy I found (ehow.com) said to sand down the spot, clean it with rust cleaner, and paint over it with oil-based paint or primer (as water-based may just irritate it more - hence why it's probably bad in the first place because that's what we used to paint over it last year.) 

So off to Lowe's I went to pick up these:

Then I went to work.

First, I sanded and let me tell you, it was an arm work-out.  The spot had some bubbling so I sanded down until it was smooth and then sanded more until all of the rust was gone.  This is after sanding:

Next I cleaned the spot with full strength CLR...but forgot to take an 'after cleaned' picture.  But, since I had sanded all the rust off, it really didn't look that different cleaned.

Out came the oil-based primer and on went four coats of it over the course of the next three days.  Spacing it over three days was to ensure each coat was completely dry.  I painted four coats because I wanted to make sure that baby was completely covered and protected.

After each coat I lightly sanded the area with a less coarse sanding block to make sure I wouldn't have any paint lines since I was putting on so many coats.  Then I waited...and waited...and waited.  A week went by and no rust had reared it's head from under my oil-based shield so I went ahead and painted over the entire area for the flawless look I/we had been waiting for.

And there you have it!  No more rust!

.           .           .

Now that that's taken care of, spring cleaning in our laundry room has come to a close and I'm moving on to the kitchen...even though at the rate I'm going it'll soon be summer cleaning.  :)