How To Fix Peeling Paint On Exterior Door

Posted June 23, 2017

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Here are the forepart doors the reader asked about.

A reader had a problem with the paint on his forepart doors, which he thought might be caused by exposure to strong sunlight for many hours each solar day. Fortunately, he sent pictures, which told me a unlike story. From the pictures, information technology seemed more likely that the damage was acquired by moisture.

UV sunlight causes painted surfaces to fade, ho-hum and eventually chalk. The paint on these doors appears to exist in quite adept shape (though maybe a little thick).

What appears to take happened is one of the virtually common outside paint problems. Moisture finds gaps where it tin can become into the wood underneath the paint, and in finish-grain situations works its style downward the wood and causes the paint to separate.

This problem is very common in cross-grain situations where wood siding butts up confronting window or doorframes. It also occurs in situations like this one where track butt up against stiles (vertical boards).

Here's a view of the problem on the middle rail.

Here's a close-upward view.

With these doors, h2o has also entered the stiles from the bottom and acquired some separation.

This motion-picture show shows the peeling acquired by water entering the stiles from the bottom, and too some peeling in the bottom rail.

In the example of siding butting against frames, you tin can keep the wet out by applying caulk to the joints, and this is normally done. But in the example of these doors, there's almost naught you lot tin can do to forestall the trouble from occurring except constant maintenance or build an overhang to go along rain from wetting the doors.

The trouble is that the boards will shrink and expand across the grain but not along the grain with humidity changes. Here, the sun exposure could have some affect past drying out the wood and so it shrinks a little more, but the sun is by far the small-scale factor. It's humidity changes from winter to spring and summertime and back that has the nearly impact.

What to practise at present with these doors? Hither'south what I suggested.

Sand or scrape level the raised areas of pigment and whatever parts of the moldings where the paint is peeling, dig the pigment and crud out of the gaps in the cross-grain joints, fill them with wood putty, sand the putty level, put a coat of primer over all the areas where you take removed paint, then repaint the entire doors.

For the bottom of the styles, to avert removing the heavy doors, work some sandpaper underneath and sand lightly simply to clean the surfaces. So soak a cloth or paper towel with a sparse stop such as wiping varnish (varnish or polyurethane thinned almost half with mineral spirits) and slide it underneath, protecting the floor with plastic or a very thin sheet of metal. Let the thinned varnish wick upwards into the cease grain, sealing it from moisture penetration.

As for the type of pigment to utilize, oil-base or water-based, it's all-time to stick with the same type that is now on the doors. To test the paint, dab on a little acetone, lacquer thinner, xylene or toluene. Each of these solvents volition crusade water-based paint to smudge and get mucilaginous pretty rapidly, within seconds. They won't cause this on oil-based paint, merely they could crusade the pigment to blister if you lot leave the solvent in contact for a long time.

Sanding, scraping, filling and repainting aren't going to solve the trouble permanently, because the woods still shrinks and expands. So gaps where moisture can penetrate will withal open up up and have to be kept filled. The culling of stripping and repainting isn't going to solve the trouble either because new paint won't stop the gaps from opening upwardly.

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