All of the intertior doors in my condo are peeling. They have been since the day I moved in. I’m figuring that when the place was build back in the mid 80s the doors were probably painted with oil-based paint and then got painted over by subsequent owners with latex.
There are two layers peeling off to reveal the bottom (at least I’m assuming it’s the bottom) layer of paint.
I want to repaint the doors since the peeling paint looks awful. What’s the best way to remove the old paint so I can properly prime the doors and apply fresh paint? Paint remover? Sanding?
The biggest problem with this is that it’s a condo, I don’t have any kind of garage and only a tiny back porch so the work will have to be done in doors or on the porch.
My husband thinks we should just buy new interior doors but I don’t think that’s the most economical solution. I’m not afraid of a little hard work but I don’t know the best way to approach this problem.
What do you think?
Oh, as a side note the same thing is happening, to a lesser extent, to all of the base boards and door moldings, the white paint is peeling off in places. This I’m not so worried about because it’s minimal but eventually we may want to paint that too.
There might be places where you can take the doors to have them dipped and stripped - it’s usually easier than doing it yourself.
Sanding will take forever and will make a big mess. Hot air gun and scraper might work. Alternatively, there are brush-on-peel-off paint stripper products available, but some of them are unpleasant to work with.
The difficulty of stripping a door depends a lot on the construction of the door. If it is a plain hollow core door, which means that each side of the door is a perfectly flat plane, a heat gun and scraper will easily remove all of the paint. If it is a flat panel or raised panel door, most of the paint can easily be removed with a heat gun and scraper, but the edges of the panel areas will be more difficult. You can use a heat gun and a wire brush for this part, followed by chemical stripper. Chemicals should definitely be used outside.
If your door is anything but a flat slab, I second the idea of either paying to have them dipped, or just buying new doors. I tried stripping some very nice old molding in my house. I used chemical stripper (citristrip), heat gun, and sanding…it was a royal pain and took way longer and was way messier than I wanted. Corners and crevices are especially difficult, you get paint globbing up and sticking like glue in those areas.
Yes, I forgot to mention that they are not flat doors. They are the type with the panels.
OK, thanks for the information, sounds like I’d be biting off more than I can chew to try and do this myself. I’ll have to see if stripping is less expensive than just buying the doors.
I’m guessing that stripping will be more expensive than buying new doors, particularly since the stripping can be somewhat hard on the wood. If the doors are veneered, the veneer is likely to come right off.
As someone who has done too much paint-scraping in his life, I can recommend buying new. Don’t underestimate, even in the best-case scenario, the cost and time involved in stripping the existing doors.
What kind of doors are they? If they are hollow-core Masonite doors or luan doors, I would pitch them and buy new ones. If they are solid wood doors they’re probably worth saving. I don’t even know if you can dip a hollow-core Masonite or luan door - they would probably fall apart when the chemicals hit the glue. Even if you can dip them, I wouldn’t spend the money to save such a cheap door.
Asked husband who does this kind of thing for a living. He said, if the place was built mid-80’s you’ve got hollow core cheap stuff and pitch them, buy pre-hung new ones. They’re already primed - you can paint if you wish with no prob. It’s going to be the most cost effective. If you are looking to get much better doors, send me an email or a PM - he can address that better with more details.
My guess is that the base paint wasn’t oil, but it was a latex semi-gloss or gloss, quite common on trim and doors, which wasn’t properly deglossed prior to application of the next layer of paint. As such, the layer which you see peeling didn’t have the right finish prep to adhere properly.
Removal is still gonna be either mechanical or chemical, neither being fun. Good luck.
You know the worst part of all of this is that I’m going to have to tell my husband that he was right all along. He’s been saying from the beginning that we should just get new doors and I’ve been saying…no…that’s so expensive…let’s just find a way to repaint.
The doors are hollow.
Missy 2U aren’t pre-hung doors the ones that come with all of the framing? I’m hoping to just buy a door, slap some hinges on it and hang it where the existing door is. Aren’t they fairly standard?
Door sizes are standard, but only pre-hung doors come ready to hang (hence the name). If you buy a slab door (not pre-hung) you have to make mortises for the hinges and drill holes for the doorknob and make a mortise for the latchplate. You even have to bevel the edge so it doesn’t hit the jamb when the door opens and closes. It’s not hard but it does require tools that the average homeowner may not have, like hole saws and chisels. The tools aren’t expensive so you can try it yourself. Figure on a couple of hours per door until you get good at it.
If you do get slab doors, the easiest way is to use the old door as a template for where the hinges and doorknob go on the new door. Making mortises with a chisel takes some patience and care. A router is much faster but if you don’t have experience with a router I don’t recommend learning on this project. They are inherently dangerous, especially when used on a surface that doesn’t fully support the router’s base (such as the edge of a door).
Get solid wood doors if you can afford them. Hollow-core doors scream “cheap”.
As danceswithcats says, the peeling layers were probably applied over a good gloss paint without roughing up the old paint first (the later paint might have been cheap crap, too; as usual, you get what you pay for).
This being the case, you probably don’t have to strip down to bare wood, just get rid of the bad paint. If the peeling is bad, you may be able to remove most of it with some sort of scraper, then sand. (Expect to change sandpaper often.)
If you replace the doors with pre-hung units, you’ll have to carefully remove all the trim around the doors, then pull the old nails out of the trim *from the back[i/] with a nail puller (a nipper-looking thing that’ll set you back several bucks). The nice thing is it’ll be easier to strip the trim if it isn’t mounted. Then you have to pull the old door jambs, then install the new unit (don’t forget to buy a few packages of shims, and I hope you already have a level). If you folks haven’t much carpentry experience, you may find it easier to just refinish the old doors.
