When we built our house we had the outside doors painted by an auto body shop because someone told us that this was the best finish and would last. After about 5 years some of those most exposed to the north have badly pealed and look terrible. I have now been told by the dealer that that paint is to hard and brittle and will always peal.
My problem is that some paint is still on and where I scrapped the old paint off it certainly will be noticeable if I paint over it.
The dealer has no good suggestions but says when I paint again use an acrylic semi gloss outdoor paint?
What do you suggest I do to remove the paint and prepare for painting. Is this the right kind of paint?
Replies
It would be helpfull if you said what kind of doors these are - wood, steel, or fibreglass/composite.
If steel, that paint is fine, sand back down to smooth and redo.
If wood, You have the wrong paint on it. Sand down to raw wood smooth and start over.
Excellence is its own reward!
Thanks for a prompt reply. Yes I missed this they are steel clad doors.
Did the peeling flakes only take off the finish paint, or the primer also exposing the raw metal. Also are they 4,6 or 8 panel metal doors?
Thanks for the help. They are steel doors, The paint the came off has some of the primer paint but also has some spots to bare metal.
I do a lot of work for condo associatoins, and a lot of that work is on doors, jambs and brick molding.
1. Most "typical" doors are not galvanized.
2. The factory primer is so cheap, just good enough so the mfg. can sell it as "pre-primed."
3. Some of them have "no" primer on the inside of the skin. consequently, when you start seeing small rust "pimples", more often than not, the door is rusting from the inside out.
4. The finish paint yo had applied probably dod not adhere to the paint, or the existing paint or primer was not prepped properly.
5. Due to the factory primer (cheap) is the main reason why those flakes that are down to the bare metal is due to that cheap primer, a bad job of preparing the metal for the primer - or both.
6. For years now, door manufactures have (via a label) been recommending a latex enamel to be used as the finish coat.
If these are the non-galvanized doors that one can buy for about $100, you're cheaper replacing the door. The only other option is to strip them down to bare metal, apply an appropriate primer like a red oxide (Rustoleum) - 2 - coats, adn then 2-3 finish coats of the best latex seimgloss you can get.
If these door are typical, the skin wraps around and go into the edges, whjich are usually wood. I run a bead of Polysealseal to seal those edges so absolutely no water can get in. Ditto for the top. I then seal the wood and bottom edges with thinned down (use Xylene) Water Shield by Geocel. This product dries like rubber, will not support mildew and is paintable.
If any of the jambs or brick molding seems punky at the bottom, cut them off and replace them with PVC, of which even rabbit jambs are now available and is all I use.
If you have access to a HVLP sprayer, it's all I use on any doors to be painted unless there are several doors where use of a regular sprayer is feasible.
Have fun.
BTW, I'm in the process of experimenting with a couple of products to use in my idea of drilling a few holes in the edges of these cheapo doors, spraying their interior cavity with an oil or waterproofing product to eliminate the rust thru from the inside. If I succeed, I'll post it on the forum.
Sonny
Have fun
I bet you failed to regularly wash and wax your doors didn't you? :-) DanT
Your intel is sort of right in my estimation. Auto body paints are far more elastic than they were 20 years ago. They have to be. Our cars aren't so much steel as they used to be. Composites, fiberglass, different metals - at any rate, yours didn't work. I guess that's the punch line to be concerned with.
A good quality exterior paint should provide you with enough durability and elasticity to stand up over time, even given some exposure considerations. Since no one here can see the door, the profile, the extent of peeling, generic advice would be to remove as much of the failing paint as you reasonably can.
If it just won't come off, that's not necessarily bad. It probably won't in the near future. If you get little ridges between peeled and existing paint, sand it down and feather it out. A random orbit sander should do well on all but the profiled sections. If you have little divots or scuffs, auto glazing compound should fill those well and sands easily in about 20 minutes.
If you're bound set and determined to get paint off, there's not much that MEK won't melt. I've had a brush I accidently left overnight on the garage floor turn to rock with the oil paint on it. Sit in MEK for five minutes and it's all gone.
"The child is grown / The dream is gone / And I have become / Comfortably numb " lyrics by Roger Waters