Painting front door tips

aj9648

Hi 

I got this front door to paint this weekend. It’s the original door from a 1930s semi and is wooden

i I assume I just need to sand, prime and paint. Does it need to be specific primer and paint for wood? 

stuart45

You only need to prime bare wood.

badger09

aj9648 said:

Hi 

I got this front door to paint this weekend. It’s the original door from a 1930s semi and is wooden

i I assume I just need to sand, prime and paint. Does it need to be specific primer and paint for wood? 

That is beautiful! I’m now suffering from severe door & stained glass envy😊

aj9648

stuart45 said:

You only need to prime bare wood.

Any issues if I did prime it ? 

stuart45

There's no real issues that I know of, although painting isn't my trade so a pro painter would know more. For badly stained wood a stain block primer could be used. Generally the idea of primer is to soak into bare wood. Painted surfaces, where the paint is well adhered to the wood are normally sanded down first.
Depending on whether the colour is being changed, a good quality undercoat to match the final colour is used before glossing.
Always worth knowing if the existing contains lead.

Albermarle

No need to prime it, just lightly sand it. 
If you are painting front, back and edges, then note that it could take a while to dry, so you will have to leave the door open for quite a while, especially in Winter.
Otherwise you could use quick drying water based paint, although for a front door that will probably get a few knocks, oil based gloss is more durable ( but takes ages to dry in cold weather)

twopenny

The tip I have is to take your time with both preparations and painting.
Hand sand the mouldings and get rid of every lomp and bump. It's really worth it because you'll be seeing it all the time and it makes it striking.

Water based is ok in winter but you can't brush over where you've painted or missed a bit.
Use water based undercoat and primer combined.
The white stays white for ages but you don't get much of a gloss on it.

If you want high gloss or its a family house liable to knocks this is a summer job for oil based.

You can put water based over gloss but it can peel and not easy to sand and repair. But not impossible.