Preparing and painting old external door

sarkozy · 12-05-2015 04:28PM #1

One of my supper projects is to re-paint (front and back) our front door. It came with the house, so it dates to around 1910. It's in good nick, but has years of paint built up and needs some filling done.

My question is how best to prepare and paint it given we'd like the door to be painted with eggshell external paint, a look that requires a well-prepared surface.

I've found some information online, but not enough. So I've some questions:

Should it really be fully stripped?
Do I need to sand it back a lot to get a flat surface?
Could I get away with feathering and filling? Would I be better off getting a handheld machine because manual would take ages? What grit, stages, etc?
Is carpenter's caulk or polyfilla OK for filling?

What I have gathered is I'll need to sand back, apply 2 undercoats, around two topcoats, cut in mouldings with a high quality brush and use a sponge roller for the rails.

slimjimmc · 12-05-2015 06:27PM

Be careful sanding because a door of that age is virtually guaranteed to have layers of lead-based paint. These layers are probably encapsulated under more recent layers of oil paint but the problem is you don't really know how much you can sand before you hit the lead-based paint. If you plan to sand a lot then make sure any power sander is attached to a suitable dust extractor and wear a suitable mask.

cardwizzard · 12-05-2015 08:09PM

Have you got a pic?

monkeynuz · 12-05-2015 09:19PM

sarkozy wrote: »

One of my supper projects is to re-paint (front and back) our front door. It came with the house, so it dates to around 1910. It's in good nick, but has years of paint built up and needs some filling done.

My question is how best to prepare and paint it given we'd like the door to be painted with eggshell external paint, a look that requires a well-prepared surface.

I've found some information online, but not enough. So I've some questions:
Should it really be fully stripped?

Do I need to sand it back a lot to get a flat surface?

Could I get away with feathering and filling? Would I be better off getting a handheld machine because manual would take ages? What grit, stages, etc?

Is carpenter's caulk or polyfilla OK for filling?

What I have gathered is I'll need to sand back, apply 2 undercoats, around two topcoats, cut in mouldings with a high quality brush and use a sponge roller for the rails.

Caulk or polyfilla won't be suitable, you will need an appropriate exterior wood filler.

Use paint stripper then Sand then fill the damage then start the painting.

Please tell me you aren't using French grey!

Preparing and painting old external door

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