50 year old house.. Wood doors need to be repained. need to remove paint,, advice on sanding etc

[KOS]

Hi I am going to repaint a wood bathroom door in a 50 year old house. The doors are in really good condition. I would like to remove the paint from the door... I have a sander but whenever I use it dust covers the entire room, so I dont want to use that.. Any liquids that work well for this type of project? I did use an environmentally friendly "paste" that you put it on and wait 24 hours then scrap off- but I dont think that will work on the door, as the paint is pretty good on there. Thanks

[Jeff Thies]

Jasco.

15 minutes. Probably not environmentally friendly but it flat out works. Use "rubber" gloves. If you have multiple layers you may need more than one application.

Jeff

I did use an environmentally friendly

[David Nebenzahl]

On 1/19/2011 1:05 PM KOS spake thus:

First question: why do you think you have to remove all the old paint from the door?

You didn't say, but the door is going to be painted, right? (If you want to varnish over the wood that's a different story.) So all you really need to do is to prep the door for paint by removing any loose paint, then leveling and smoothing the rest. If there are big gobs of paint in places, these can probably be taken down with a sharp chisel or even a putty knife.

I wouldn't try to sand it down to bare wood. On an old door, you risk rounding off and ruining the molding, for one thing. Just clean it up, prime it, then paint it.

[aemeijers]

He is also apparently trying to do it in place, which is a mistake IMHO. Take it down and do it in the basement or garage, or on back porch once warm weather hits. Doing a side at time on tall sawhorses is a lot easier than prepping and painting a vertical surface.

[hallerb]

yeah take door off, remove hardware, use paint stripper outdoors, then clean and sand.

way better outdoors.. I have done this.

only trouble it may come out so good you will want to do all doors in home.

removing paint restores all sorts of details lost be many coats of paint

[noname87]

Make sure you check to see if the paint has lead in it. If so, I would be careful about sanding.

If there is no lead, you might be able to use a heat gun to soften the paint enough to scrap. I would do this outside or in a garage. Another option is to take the door to a local paint stripper. A friend did this with his lead painter trim.

[David Nebenzahl]

On 1/19/2011 3:14 PM [e-mail] spake thus:

This would be about the only valid reason to try to strip paint from the door.

If there are details that are gunked-over with many layers of paint, you could just strip these places. You don't need to take the entire door down to bare wood.

Keep in mind, too, that there are businesses that specialize in stripping furniture, and apparently have stripping tanks large enough to dunk an entire door in. You might consider this, if the whole door really does need to be stripped. Plus they take care of disposing of all the toxic shit left over afterwards.

[HeyBub]

Doing anything with paint - other than putting it on something - inside your home will render your home almost uninhabitable.

Take the door outside.

Use the harshest paint remover you can find. It will take several applications.

Then use your sander.

[hrhofmann]

A stripper specialist is the easist way to get it down to the original wood without exposing folks to dubious chemicals.

[HeyBub]

Exactly what Honeysuckle Events said when I was calling around to plan a bachelor party.

[Joe]

[jimmy]

After moving into a 100 yr old home my wife wanted the molding and doors to look better. I removed all the molding took it outside, and tried paint remover 4 thick coats of paint on the door which the remover didn't remove.. I used a torch and scraper (heat guns were not available then) remember REMOVE is the word before using a torch do not torch in place, if I did it now I would use nothing but a heat gun and still be very careful. My neighbors house burned down because a local paint contractor used a torch on her siding to remove paint. Any way some of the molding that was painted I was able to stain and finish. In my opinion paint remover doesn't work.

[hallerb]

theres a wide variety of paint remover, the noxious ones work best.

patience and multiple stripping attempts gets the job done

[aemeijers]

If you are removing trim to strip it, need to crunch the numbers and assign a value to your time. Unless it is some species or size or quality of wood you simply can't get any more, or you are trying to match an existing profile of trim in other rooms, and local millwork shop does not have a knife for it, it is often cheaper/faster to build back with new wood. Especially true if leaded paint is a concern to you. Stripper is expensive. And even the 'green' stuff is a nasty PITA to use.