WORKING WOODWORK

I'll bet you have heard this one, in one form or another:
  "A lady had the entire interior of her home painted. A few weeks later she was picking at some loose paint on a door and all of a sudden the paint peeled off the door in one continuous sheet!" Of course she was driven utterly mad by the situation and was ultimately carted away by Doctors who shook their heads and lamented over yet another case of :
   
 LATEX OVER OIL!

The true culprit in this story is never mentioned, the lazy or inexperienced painter that failed to properly sand, prime and prepare the door for painting.

Oil or alkyd based paints, varnishes and polyurethanes dry to an almost nonporous slick finish. Water based paints (latex) simply do not adhere well to slick, nonporous surfaces that have not been prepared properly. Instead of bonding they float to form a shell around the surface. Sanding provides an etched surface to give our latex paint or primer a place to root and bond with the old paint. Regardless of the type of previous paint we need to prep it.

Painters often refer to windows, doors, baseboards etc. as trim. Mostly to separate them from walls and ceilings and to distinguish the type of paint to be used on them. We will discuss that further, a little later, right now we need to take a closer look at the trim in our room and prep (oops, sorry, I'm sure you are sick of that word by now) let's just say we need to get it ready to paint.

The first thing we need to do to prepare our old alkyd painted woodwork for painting is to "cut a tooth" in it. The object here is to ruff up (slightly) or etch the surface of the old paint. This will allow our new paint or primer to get a better bite into the old paint. The result will be a good bond between the two surfaces. I'm going to take two sheets of 220 grit sandpaper, the first I've wadded into a ball, flattened, and balled again until I've worked out all the stiffness and hard points. This paper I will use to sand the curved surfaces such as window and door moldings, baseboards, etc.
The second sheet I've quarter folded as we did when sanding patches, I will use this to sand the large flat surfaces of doors, etc. Now it is just a matter of elbow grease, but please do not over do this. Remember the object here is to slightly etch the surface, do not sand through the surface or round the edges of the trim. Oh yeah, when sanding next to window glass, keep off the glass unless you really like etched glass....permanently etched glass.

Now that the trim has been sanded we can take one more precautionary step. Grab our gallon bucket and sponge, go to the laundry room and sprinkle a dash of laundry detergent into the bucket then fill about two thirds full with warm water. Laundry detergent contains grease and oil lifting agents, so, well you get the picture. Simply damp sponge the sanded woodwork , keep the sponge damp and don't forget to rinse it out often.

Finally, wipe the woodwork off with clear water.…
Let it dry.



  
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Roger Woodward is a painting contractor with over twenty five years in the Painting Trade. Over the years R. Woodward & Co. has established a reputation for high quality workmanship, honesty and fairness. Roger's professional and sometimes innovative approach to the house painting craft has garnered him the respect of his fellow Craftsmen and provided a customer loyalty that is seldom seen. Roger is also the Founder and Publisher of Painter Forum,  an outstanding free home painting resource for DIY and professional house painters.
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Painting Frankenstein
by Roger Woodward
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