Painted Front Door

My house is about 50 years old. I think the door may be the original door. It is a heavy duty wood door. It has always been a dirty off-white color on both the inside and the outside. In certain areas the paint was cracked and even was peeling off a bit.

This of course gave me the idea that it would be fairly easy to strip the paint off and repaint it. Due to the areas of cracked and peeling paint, I didn't want to just add another paint onto it. I researched and found Citristrip Paint Remover had good reviews and the fumes were not as toxic as other paint removers. Since it was my front door and I knew I wouldn't have time to do it all at once, I decided to leave the door on the hinges when I first started off. I applied it to the interior of the door and let it sit.

After about 30 minutes it started to bubble up. I was able to scrape off the paint pretty easily. It was a tedious process and it did take a few applications but it was not too bad.

 I then started on the front of the door. Woah, what a disaster! The Citristrip did NOTHING. It barely bubbled up. It turns out that the front of the door had many layers of paint and due to being exterior, the sun baked the paint on for years.

I went back to Home Depot and bought Klean-Strip which is a stronger paint stripper. This required wearing a mask as the fumes were strong. Gloves were required for both Citristrip and Klean-Strip but with Citristrip I didn't wear them. With Klean-Strip if it got on my skin it burned. So definitely wear thick gloves if you ever use that product.

After a lot of layers of paint stripper, a lot of hours of scraping, I was asking what I got myself into and regretting the choice to do this. It was definitely a lot worse than I thought it would be. It was also a mess using both products. The paint becomes wet and almost gummy. Nothing I seemed to do worked well and since it has the panels, getting into the corners and grooves was very difficult.

Finally I was able to borrow a sander from a co-worker. We took the door off the hinges and while wearing a mask so I wouldn't be breathing in dust, I got to work sanding it.That is what did the trick and finally got the paint off.

Once all the paint was off, I was able to prime it and paint it! That was the easy part. I also decided to replace the old door handle and got a  more updated door handle as well.

Now for the final picture. I chose teal for both the inside and the outside because I wanted a pop of color. The inside of my house is very neutral with beige walls and beige and black furniture. The teal brightens it up.

Looking at the photo, I realize this was taken with only one coat of paint on the door. It did require a second coat and looks much better and even. Here is a closer view with two coats of paint. From a distance it looks nice. I am a perfectionist and just could not get some of the old paint up completely in the grooves so if you look closely in person you see the imperfections but I'm learning to not focus on those.