Then you get down to the real business of doing the faux wood painting technique. Time for the gel stain! I used the Verathane brand gel stain in Mahogany (an exterior version of gel stain doesn’t seem to exist, but I’ll be sealing this), a quart was more than enough for 2 double doors. Turn on the sound to hear me narrate what I am doing in the video below. I went row by row in a large grain pattern but there are a million ways to do this based on your garage door, the direction of grain you want, and how large scale you want the wood grain to look. You have to move fast to keep the gel stain workable and its best to do it when the sun isn’t beating right down on you. I watched a lot of you tube videos for technique ideas. I recommend stepping back occasionally to see how its looking from a distance and try not to get too uniform in your method. I did a few “knots” by lightly dry brushing some small “V” shapes I heavily applied first. But you can also choose to keep this step very simple and skip the addition of the wood grain all together, you’ll notice it still looks pretty convincing before I even add the grain!