How to Remove Paint from Doors

LESLIE: We’ve got Anna on the line who needs some help with some door improvement. Tell us what you’re working on.

ANNA: Hi. Yes, I have one metal door and three fiberglass doors that – I got a guy to paint it. And not knowing – when I got home, he actually painted with a spray-can paint. So when the heat hits the door, I can’t open the door because it’s sticking to the door jamb.

TOM: Oh, boy. What a mess. What a mess.

ANNA: How do I repair that?

TOM: Well, you know, even though he painted it with spray paint, it should still work. I mean it should dry. The fact that it’s spray paint is not making it any more or less tacky than perhaps if you use paint out of a gallon. But the fact that it’s sticking might mean that the door needs a bit of adjustment inside the opening. Are all the doors sticking?

ANNA: All the doors stick right on the rubber of the door jamb. It’s like a can paint, not – I’m like, “Well, you sprayed what to the door?”

TOM: What kind of paint did he use?

ANNA: He went to the hardware store, got a spray-can paint and sprayed it.

TOM: Well, look, what you should do now, if you’ve had a bad paint job, is you really have to pull that old paint off. So I would take the doors off of the hinges, lay them down horizontally, use a paint remover to pull off the paint that’s there.

Once you get it back down to where it was when you started, then I would prime the doors first. And I would use an oil-based primer, because that’s going to give you good adhesion to both the metal and the fiberglass doors. And then I would put a good, top-quality finish coat on that using a semi-gloss paint. Then let them dry really well and then reinstall them.

ANNA: So is it possible then to – this is on metal and fiberglass – to get a paint remover for this thing?

TOM: Yes. There’s paint removers – the citrus-based removers are the most effective, so use the citrus-based paint removers, pull off the old paint, prime the doors and then repaint them. You should be good to go. OK, Anna?

ANNA: Thank you so very much again.