Refinishing door and can’t remove paint

Submitted by Large_Community36 t3_z8dllc in DIY

So I started this project to refinish an old door in my house. One side was painted white and the other was stained. The stained side sanded down really nice but the painted side… not so much. I stripped it multiple times and the top layers of the paint came right off but there is this layer underneath that just doesn’t want to come all the way off and even where it looks like it’s all gone it’s almost changed the wood - the oil based stain I tried to use is not getting in all the way. What can I do to fix it?

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dukeofmadnessmotors t1_iyb5aqu wrote

You can try a heat gun, they work well on certain types of paint.

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alohadave t1_iycng9p wrote

It works well. I turn old doors into desks, and they typically have many layers of paint.

Hit it with a heat gun, make it bubble/burn, then let it cool completely. When you run a paint scraper over it, it'll flake right off. Much less messy than dealing with molten paint.

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dukeofmadnessmotors t1_iyec7xr wrote

Also much better for the environment, paint stripper has some nasty solvents in it.

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PioneerStandard t1_iyb46kw wrote

Circa 1850 is an excellent product but on the toughest doors that clients demand restoration, I take them to a dipping facility.

The doors go into a tank and the technicians pull them up every day or so to see the progress. A local Google search in your area may provide results. If not, call some contractors in your area that do restoration work. Any seasoned professional will have a dip strip contact in their Rolodex.

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5degreenegativerake t1_iyb5xhi wrote

Even if all the paint is off the surface, you need to then sand down to virgin, uncontaminated wood to get a stain to take properly.

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aZamaryk t1_iybp4tw wrote

You could sandblast it. I've done wood with fine grit. Mask off glass and what you dont want done. Small blasters are fairly cheap at Northern tool. A drawback is it requires lots of air, renting a compressor is an option. You just have to wait between blasts and fine tune lowest pressure needed.

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SpearCatcher1 t1_iyb9qbu wrote

In some Victorian era houses, rooms at the front of the house got nice millwork, and kitchens and other backrooms got cheap wood which was painted. I've seen kitchen and other doors which were literally oak or better hardwood on one face, and pulp wood on the other. If this is the case in your house, do you really want to make the effort if one side of the door was painted for a reason?

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series_hybrid t1_iyddref wrote

I've seen a lot of older houses where a room has nice oak around the edges, and poplar or some similarly cheaper wood in the middle, because many people used rugs in the middle.

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