Thorondor, on 21 July 2018 - 02:18 PM, said:
Whatever you applied to those hardboard panels actually did the trick just fine, Zombie, even if it didn't adhere as well as it was supposed to.
We keep judging paint jobs from an aesthetic point of view but what they're truly meant to do is protect the material it's being applied on. And, on that count, as can be seen in the picture you took, it absolutely did keep that wood in pretty much pristine condition.
I think those panels were fine even before I painted them years ago. The reason I painted them was to make it look better and to brighten up the room (so basically aesthetics). What protects the inside more was my careful maintenance of the outside of the door which takes the full brunt of scorching sun in the summer and snow in the winter. I touched up the outside almost every other year.
Thorondor, on 21 July 2018 - 02:18 PM, said:
As for that oil based primer, yeah, it's kind of hard to overlook how richly brown it is.
Still, I'm sure you'll overcome the challenge of covering it easily enough by laying a nice, thick coat, of fancy white paint on top of it.
The thing is, fifteen years from now, when you decide that door needs scraping again, you'll once more catch yourself scratching your head wondering whose bright idea was it to put a brown primer underneath white paint.

Hopefully I will not be around there in 15 years to worry about it. Though the next guy will certainly have a fun surprise.
Here's a pic of the lower part of the door just for reference:
First of all, when I paint I usually cover things up with cardboard. That's one thing we have an overabundance of at work. I don't care how clean of a painter you think you are either, you are always going to make a mess. I try to keep the drips and splatter to a minimum though. Anyway the panel on the lower right I replaced a while ago but never got around to painting it. It had some sort of paint on it, but it was partially soaked away on the lower part so I primed the whole panel. The molding which holds in the panel will need to be caulked as well.
With the majority of the door primed, I turned my attention to the muntin bars around the windows. The bottom ones looked like they were a little loose and were peeling heavily. I made the executive decision to carefully remove them. I put these bars on the last time and used some tiny brad nails about ¾ inch long. I've found the best way to remove the bars is to ignore trying to get the nails to come along with the piece. Carefully pry the bars up and the nail heads should pull through the molding and stick in the frame. How to get the nails out of the frame? Easiest way is to grab them with a Vise-Grip (or locking pliers) and they pull right out with a little twisting. There's no sense in keeping the nails either - just toss them and use new ones.
Now that the bars were off, I could sand them with some 50 grit sandpaper to remove the majority of the loose paint then went over that with 80 grit to smooth things out. After that, there was hardly any paint on them anymore so I decided to use the same brown oil primer on them for protection. Here's where it get's tricky. How do you paint the whole bar and have it dry without it sticking to something? My favorite option (if the piece has a hole in it) is to take a piece of wire and stick it through the hole, paint the piece, then hang it up to dry on the wire. Because the bars are small, it's hard to grip them while painting so I opted for lightly putting a drywall screw into one of the brad holes at the end of the bar, then wrapping a wire around the screw. Hard to explain, maybe a pic or two will do:
That was the aftermath of my handiwork - the bars look pretty good. Oh, but I was not finished! The same treatment I did to the bars I also did to the lower part of the frame where the bars nail to. Scraped, sanded with 50 grit, wire brushed, 80 grit, and finally brown oil primer. It all dried splendidly before I left work yesterday.
Today I decided to spray the bars with some of that bullseye 1-2-3 stain blocking primer as these bars got wet from rain seeping in around the windows and undoubtedly had some water stains. Perhaps the brown oil primer would have been good enough to block water stains but I need the bars white eventually so I figured I might as well hit them with bullseye. That 30 minute dry time is a good sell as the bars were dry before I even had a chance to put the cap back on the spray can.
I also took off the side muntin bars as there were a few that looked loose and yeah, they were peeling a little too. Here again, these got the same treatment as before with the scraping, sanding, wire brushing and primer. Ditto for the frame. The bars didn't dry as fast as I would have liked (probably because I put on a heavy coat) so I tried to speed the drying along with a heat gun. While that did work, I didn't want to chance putting on a coat of bullseye with the brown primer possibly still a little wet underneath. That'll have to wait till Monday.
While painting the side frame today I noticed that some of the polycarbonate glass panes were loose in the frame. I did use glazing on the windows when I replaced them years ago, but it looks like that glazing has dried up and pulled away from the windows. To really do a proper job I would need to take the last muntin bar out, scrape all the old glazing off, reprime the frame, apply new glazing, put the window back in and reattach the bars. Then I got to thinking. Why bother doing all that work only to use the same old, yellow, opaque polycarbonate glass? I ran it past Mr Bossman and got the approval for 3 new panes of crystal clear Lexan. Now I can do a proper job!
- Zombie