I wonder if someone could explain to me why my paint work is peeling?
I know this is the latest in a catalogue of "disasters" - but this is not life threatening.
The paint has been on the doors ( two internal ones) for fifteen years at least. I am not good at painting with gloss.
Recently it started to peel off on these doors. A small bit first and now whole chunks. If touch it I can literally pull strips of paint off the door leaving the coat underneath visible ( its green so I can see the difference) .
I have considered just scraping off the top white gloss coat and leaving the pale green ( except I hate green) in its place to save painting. But I wonder why after all these years its just decided to peel off this way? I am guessing it was painted green with apple white walls and woodchip paper and even the obligatory avocado suite in the bathroom back in the 1970's/ early 80's?
If I re paint will I need to strip it all back to the wood or something?
Over a period of years, paint shrinks and hardens due to oxidisation and a gradual loss of solvents. It becomes brittle and flaky. It is also probably the case that, when the door was painted white, there was insufficient preparation done to the green paint to ensure that the white paint adhered properly.
When you repaint it, make sure to wash it down first using sugar soap, and then sand it lightly but thoroughly to give a key between coats. Of course, before you do this, all flaking paint must have been removed.
Remove doors. Take to door stripping company. Part with a tenner or so. Collect doors a few days later Sand lightly. Varnish Enjoy the look, texture and comments from visitors of the nice wood doors you have
... huge number of comments from people saying "stripped doors, that's so 80s."
Umm and having had them dipped and stripped put up with the fact that they will shrink, crack, and have a much shorter life than if you done them properly.
It's always a difficult decision, depending on the age of the doors. Victorian or Edwardian doors will have been carefully prepared with knots filed with "stopping" then primer, undercoat and top coat. If at all possible it's best to leave these basecoats alone.
OTOH if your doors are only fifteen years old they are likely to be poor quality mass-market units which have been spray-painted in a factory with primer and then badly finished by the developer, in a rush.
Assuming that these are old doors and that you're just saying that the last time they were decorated was fifteen years ago, then I think you can assume that they are ready for new paint. Your next decision is to assess just how bad the flaking is. From the sound of it the top coat is coming off but the coats below (the green coat and whatever is underneath that) are OK.
This makes it sound as if the problem is that the door was not properly prepared before the white coat was applied. If it was just slapped over the green coat with no preparation then flaking is expected. Grease and dirt from the atmosphere form a layer over paint and prevent new paint from sticking properly. The solution is to remove the white paint and then to prepare the surface for painting before applying a new coat of paint.
If, as you say, the white paint peels off easily, peel it all off to reveal the green painted layer. Having done this, or as much of it as possible you need to sand the entire door to provide a key and to level off any remaining bits of white paint. This is going to make dust, a lot of it, and no matter how you arrange things dust will get everywhere. Sanding by hand using a sanding block is probably best, because a power tool will destroy detail on mouldings and is too aggressive for the job. I'd suggest going over the entire door with 60 grit abrasive paper. Somethign good quality such as aluminium oxide paper. Then go over it again with 80 grit and then again with 120. Remove the dust with a vacuum cleaner going carefully over the entire surface of the door. Once this is done wipe down the door with a cloth soaked in wipe spirit then repeat using a clean cloth and more white spirit then dry off with a clean, dry lint-free cloth. This should give you a surface good enough to paint over.
If you're really rubbish at gloss painting is there no one you can ask to do it for you? Alternatively if the door doesn't have a lot of moulded detail you might consider using a small gloss roller to apply the paint.
A lot to be said for sending problem doors to the strippers and starting again, the non-caustic method if you want to avoid the problems previously outlined.
Yes, I think they are the sort of mass produced doors. In fact they are hollow in the middle - I am not sure that makes them made of wood or hardboard? They are the sort that a lot of houses had in the late 1950's early 1960's. The sort still in use today. Not proper old wooden doors at all. Sorry, I should have made that clear. I had forgotten that some doors are proper wood.
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