We had made 2 doors with glass inserts for our shop. The doors were made out of 2x4's routed inside for the glass to fit into. The guy who made them used cheap pine and primed them. We went and painted them. But now I hate the look. I can see many depressions in the wood because of the softness of the wood. I want to maybe stain the doors. Dumb question - Can I stain over the latex paint? Or should I sand everything down. I can see having trouble sanding the trim near the glass. What stripper would be the best to remove the latex paint and primer?
My other thought was to cover all the wood with a laminate similar to making counter tops. Any advice would be appreciated. Here is a link to the picture of the door.
I rehab old houses in my spare time, so I run into doors in this condition frequently. You can't "stain" over the paint, but you could fill the depressions with body filler, sand, and then repaint.
I have had good luck with the natural citrus stripper. YMMV. Sanding around the glass shouldn't be a problem, maybe just a little tedious to get in there. You should be able to get most of the paint off with the stripper.
I think this would be more trouble and look worse.
Staining is out of the question. You will never get the paint removed well enough for that IMHO.
Latex enamel is very difficult to remove in my experience. Paint removers do not work well with it. The best success I have had was to use straight lacquer thinner which will soften the latex and allow you to remove stringy, nasty ribbons of the material.
You have now learned that surface preparation is over 90% of any finishing project. The filling and sanding needed to have happened before the paint. The entire door should have been skimmed with Bondo or other suitable filler and finish sanded before applying paint. I would be concerned about the adhesion of Bondo or any filler on top of the latex and would recommend removing it down to bare wood and digging it out of the dents and chips to aid in adhering filler. After applying filler, sand with an extremely critical eye. Fill again and sand again if required. Prime! This is when you will find the imperfections. A heavy bodied primer can be sanded and redone until the imperfections are taken care of.
All of this is a lot of work. You can sand it and declare "good enough", but you cannot effectively sand latex paint until it is fully cured - a week or more with good conditions. Even when cured it will tend to clog sandpaper quickly. Most painters would tend to use oil base enamel. I wish I could see an easier out for you. You might consider "antiquing" the door. It won't fill any of the nicks and dings, but may disguise enough of them to become acceptable for you and also head toward the staining idea. ______________________________ Keep the whole world singing . . . . DanG (remove the sevens) snipped-for-privacy@7cox.net
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