Door Painting Hacks for New Construction Interiors

Hey, this is Chris the Idaho Painter. Hopefully you enjoyed this video. This is one of many videos out of my new construction course. Everything you need to know about a painting a new construction interior. If you want to see that course, it's over and available at paintlifeupply.com. Hopefully enjoy this video. We've got a lot more that you can see later on. Right. In this video, we're going to be talking about spraying doors in uh new construction. So, this is kind of a typical scenario what it looks like, you know, spraying doors. I want to talk about there's multiple options, you know, how to go about spraying doors in new construction, you know, and a lot of that is just it it depends on, you know, your comfort level spraying doors standing versus spraying doors laying flat. There's a lot of different schools of thought. Now, one of the beauties about new construction is all the space you do have to be able to do a lot of doors. Now, I have a living room right here. This is all the doors from the upstairs. We stood them all up right here. We've already got them, you know, prepped. We got them sanded. We got them uh sprayed the first coat. Then we sand them again. We sprayed the second coat. They're all completely done now. Uh when they're dry, we begin taking them down. We begin stacking them out in the garage and getting them, you know, out of the way. There's multiple options. We'll talk about the option that I use that I favor in new construction is standing them up with a metal door stand right here. Now, I've, you know, came up with my own door stands that are solid steel door stands that are extremely sturdy that I screw up there. There's a lot of different things, you know, guys do. They'll take stir sticks. They'll take pieces of trim. There's a lot of different options. And that's, you know, standing doors up. The foam pro ones I did for quite a few years. They're plastic. What you don't want to do is set them outside. Once again, you know, um, from my personal experience, today's a windy day. We were working on the house. We set them up outside and, uh, they blew over after I sprayed them. Complete disaster. So, don't stand doors up outside. You can do them stand them up in a garage, you know, drop cloths, uh, paper down, you know, to protect things. So, uh, I stand them up in kind of like in an accordion fashion like this. I like to be able to walk in and out of them, spray. This is very convenient. The house is, uh, just PVA primed. I showed some um videos of this, you know, on social media recently and people are saying, "Oh my gosh, you're getting overspray on the roof, on the ceiling, and it's only PVA primed. It doesn't matter where you get overspray anywhere you get. Um doesn't matter getting overspray on the floor cuz just like the ceiling, uh the floor is going to be covered with tile, um LVP or carpet, something is going to be covering this subfloor." Another thing, you know, somebody had talked about, you know, and commented on is as I'm spraying these doors, they're like, you know, overspray is falling on the other doors. Now, when you're spraying these doors, as fast as I can spray these doors, um, by the time I do the two at the end and I'm spraying the next two, and if overspray is going up and falling down those doors, they're still sping wet. And the overspray is not going to do anything. It's not going to make it rough. It's not going to cause an issue. If you sprayed the first two doors down there and you went off and did something else, 30 minutes later you came back, those were dry, and you sprayed the next two doors and you're shooting over the top. Uh, yes. Now, overspray could end up being a problem. One person mentioned, you know, why don't you put cardboard shields and screw cardboard shields to the top? You know, you could do that, but then this the the the the paint's going to bridge from your door to the shield when you go to pull it off. You're going to have problems. I've done this method right here for over 25 years, and it absolutely works. Now, this method, standing them up, you'll see down here, I have um the doors sitting on stir sticks. So, from a learning lesson, if you had them sitting on the floor, paint will get build up over multiple coats and it's going to bridge from the door to the floor and when you go to move the door, it's going to stick to the floor and it might pull uh paint off the door or it might leave um paint, you know, um film, you know, kind of like rough and jagged along the bottom that you have to sand off. So, I just take break stir sticks. They're free from the paint sore. I break them, stack them on the doors, and then we paint it just like that. Now, you know, when you're spraying the doors, they're on a a floor, a dirty floor. Before we actually stand up these doors, we shot back the whole floor really, really good. We shot back, and I'm pretty particular. I shot back, you know, the whole room. And then we begin the process of standing up the doors, and we stand them all up. We did the initial prep work, them just leaning up against the wall. So that's the initial sand. So we sand them, we vacuum, dust them with a microfiber cloth, then we begin standing them up. Once we get them all stood up, we go back and vacuum the whole perimeter around the doors in and out the doors cuz the last thing you want to do is be kicking dust up onto the door and making the bottom of the door rough. So we're very particular about vacuuming and cleaning. I am holding um a super stacker. If you've been wondering what's in my hand, you know, some people are uncomfortable spraying up if you don't have the experience cuz you think you might get runs. Uh one thing, you know, even this is probably the most difficult scenario to spray is a flat door, smooth face door. There's no wood grain on it. A lot of doors like three panel doors and stuff, they're really forgiving. you can't see, you know, imperfections and stuff like that. And somebody that sprays bad, this is going to show, you know, everything. Your overlaps, if you're not overlapping enough, getting dry feathered edges, and you're not getting it gelled in enough, you're really going to see it really bad. But, you know, you'll figure it out. And, uh, this is the easiest way to me to do it, the fastest way to do it, you know, versus uh, stacking your doors. Super stackers, you'll put them on the ends of the doors. You'll spray the door flat, flip it over, spray the next door, and then you'll stack them. And you begin stacking them. And instead of having to take up all this room right here, they'll just stack in one place. So you can stack them out in the garage or I can stack them over in the corner. One of the reasons I don't use super stackers or door deckers, this is actually I think I might have said super stacker, but this is a door decker. Um there's another type of uh doors um that stack. They're called um Super Stackers. And I've used them both. I like them both. I like them both equally. This one's metal. Super stackers are uh plastic. But one of the issues with them is the doors are stacked, you know, pretty close. Ventilation becomes a problem and the doors take a long period of time because there's no ventilation in between the doors and all the chemicals outging just keep the door dry for a significant period of time. One time we were doing a lot of doors doing that. They sat in the garage. The next day they were still wet. That becomes a problem because uh you know dust, debris can start landing getting inside there and you know causing the doors to be rough. Now uh when we were do when we do this method we force dry them by having a box fan blowing through and you get ventilation going through but then you risk run the risk of contamination. In new construction, we use super stackers and door deckers a lot of times where we don't have all this open spaces spray like in a um say a repaint. So this um this course is all about new construction. New construction you typically have just unlimited space and it's so nice. That's one of the benefits to it. So here's the door stood up. The process we went through kind of explained it a little bit. We got doors sitting over here. We sand them first with a film tech or Echostorm. Typically, like I I typically would use like a 320 or 220. Uh these doors came out primed, you know, really bad primed that whoever the door company is, they primed them. I got to say, a terrible job. They were extremely eggshelly. That's all going to show up in your finish. So, I use a pretty aggressive uh abrasive, a 150 to sand them all and sand them flat, you know. And it's really important because they are flat. The majority of doors we deal with have a wood grain to them and you wouldn't see that. But so we use the 150 sanding them flat. We had them stacked up and we begin shot vacuuming them. You got to get all that dust off. Shot back them and then we wipe them down with a microfiber cloth. And then I sprayed on my first coat. So I sprayed on my first coat. Once the first coat is on, I used a film tech a half inch um foam abrasive to just lightly and quickly sand them. You don't want to You're only I'll take and just rub them down to feel if there was anything missed in the initial sand, I'll rub them with my bare hand. And then after I rub them and I don't feel anything, you know, and they feel like glassy smooth, then um we'll I'll uh continue the sanding and then just wipe them down with a microfiber cloth. But in these contoured edges and stuff, you're going to want to touch that, wipe that, feel everything. But I use a 1/2 in um ultra fine uh open cell sponge, which is an echo silk sponge. Now, anywhere from uh you know, a fine, super fine, ultra fine. I really like a ultra fine, you know, especially on these doors since the the finish is really really smooth. But you're just trying to knock down anything that might be a little bit rough on the door. So, we just quickly hit them, hit them all, wipe them down once again with a microfiber cloth, you know, right after we sand them, and then we shoot the second coat, and then they set for a day before we take them down and um stack them out of the way. What you don't want to do is leave these here and do any type of spraying of your walls or your trim or anything where you could get overspray on them. If the garage is warm enough, uh, and it's warm enough outside, the temperature, you don't have a lot of fluctuations. You're not worried about, you know, the doors warp warping anything. Just stack them outside. If you're worried about warping them, we actually have right here in a kitchen a wall right here where I know there's, um, countertops, um, cabinets, everything's covered there. We can just begin stacking them right here on the wall that's going to be out of the way. Uh, these ones, they could go up into a closet upstairs and out of the way. Um cuz these are all the upstairs doors. Once I spray the closet, we can put it inside and then cover that up and they'll be protected inside. So, there's the process. Uh what it looks like, you know, make sure the edges of the doors, they're sanded. You want them smooth. Um you know, when you're vacuuming, shop vacuuming, a lot of times there's a lot of dust and debris from where they cut this. So, make sure you shop back around that cuz you'll get, you know, debris blowing through this hole and onto the other door. It's kind of something you'll run into um that I just, you know, want to touch on there. But we're going to, you know, run you through, give you um a look at what this whole process looks like. Standing them up, you know, this method right here. I've actually done this uh by myself. Uh it looks like it's possibly a twoman job. Lot easier uh with two people, but these are holo core doors, light doors. I'll grab two of them. I'll have a a stool and I just like open them up right here. I'll just hold them myself, climb up on the stool, screw them together. Once again, it is easier uh with two people. A lot easier. But I've done this method by myself. I've done the foam pro door method by myself. Super stackers uh door deckers. That's a twoperson thing cuz you have to have one person on one end, another person on the other end to flip them and rotate them. So, if you're doing that method and spraying them down, then uh you know, you'll have to have two people. So, one of the, you know, I'll just talk about the b maybe the drawbacks. If you're not comfortable spraying up, you know, runs, sags, you know, if you're not comfortable with doing that when you're spraying them down, you can absolutely load tons of paint on them instead of having to two coat them. You really still should coat them, but you can load tons of paint. You're not going to get runs. Flip it over, load tons more paint, no runs. Uh, so you can be confident you're not going to get any runs. But once again, to me, it doesn't eliminate a step because I always two coat them anyways. And if you're not confident spraying the doors with getting um without getting runs on them, then I'm not sure how you're going to tackle and spray the door jambs, you know, and the window sills and stuff like that if you're doing full wrapped windows without getting runs either. And you know, same goes the walls and stuff. So, I I just highly suggest, you know, learning, getting comfortable with standing up when you're doing new construction. All right. Now, we're going to start taking our doors down just like they go up. We're just going to be unscrewing them. You know, one person's going to be grabbing the one door, removing it, leaning up against the wall. Make sure who's ever handling the doors that's taking them down, they should wash their hands before handling the doors. The last thing you want to do is get dirty handprints on the door. If the doors aren't 100% cure, it's very important that your fingers go into the door hole and other finger goes where the hinges are. Do not like manhandle or grab the doors. So, that one's ready to go. If you're using like a long cure time paint, you know, some paints take 30 days to cure. Um, say for instance, like one of the common paints we use, uh, Sherworms Emerald Urethane. It's a great product. Uh, but you could, if you're the same day, next day, you could easily, you know, put a a fingerprint on the door and that could be really bad. So try to handle the doors as little as possible. Anything that can scratch the doors, keep them in your pockets. Watch the door that the handler has. Make sure you're unscrewing the one that he's got. You control the other door. He takes off with that door. It's good to have a drill that has a hook on it. Just like that. So, we're going to move all these doors out of the way. Set up new doors. So, I'm going to take find two holes, center them. I want the my um steel door hanger kind of coming off at like a 45° angle. This is a really critical step. When you screw these in, make sure they're in the center of the door and not coming off at an angle. The last thing you want to do is split it out the side of the door. Typically what I do is my first door I put in two screws. I want to set my drill so you know it ratchets. I don't want it too tight, overly tight, but I want it tight enough. So, two screws. I think I got three more downstairs doors that'll go right here in this place. Also, I've got the front door. So, the front door doesn't match heightwise any other the doors. The front door, I'm probably going to shoot that laying down because you do one side is interior color, opposite side is exterior color. So, I'll be doing that laying down. I'll bring my saw horses in here. We'll show that in another video. Odd man out right here. This is three. So, we're hooking three together and that's going to be our final doors. and we're going to inspect them and begin spraying our first coat. We've got everything vacuumed. We vacuumed really well all the way around. So, I'm not going to be kicking up, you know, dust. I think there might be, you know, some question, you know, when you're spraying these doors, you know, is the overspray going to carry from, you know, uh, where I just, cuz I'll start here on this end, I'll start spraying, work my way down this way. Is the overspray going to get on these doors over here and mess them up? It's not going to it's not going to mess them up because these things are going to be, you know, completely saturated with paint. Those are going to be still wet when I'm spraying these down here. So, it's not going to be an issue. Um, so ready to get going. Little tip, I always turn the heat up, crank the heat up. Um, like everything to be warmed up, you know, before I start spraying. I forgot to turn the heat up, you know, when we left yesterday. So, everything's a little bit cool. Um, but you want to turn the heat off, you know, once you start spraying because you don't want, you know, the dust, you know, carrying up into the return air and going into the filters and the furnace. So, you know, stuff feels, you know, a little bit cool, but um, you know, I typically like the stuff to be room temperature. It's um kind of a little bit cool, but we'll see how the product hangs. Say if like some paints, trim paints are very thick and um like to be sprayed at higher temperatures. And so you I like to just get the heat cranked up to at least like 75 before I start spraying. Right now, the internal temperature in here feels you about 70. The product um is a new product I've been using, uh Scuf Tough. I just started testing it out. Um it does hang pretty well in um cooler temperatures. So um you know, once again, if you do get a run, um it's always sandable and fixable. So here we go. We're going to start spraying. I kind of like like hitting the edges first. I'll hit the edges first, then I'll come back and begin spraying my faces. So, like I would spray, you know, these edges, then I'd come back, start right here, you know, spray um these two faces, work my way around around the other side and come around and get this face. Always good idea to have, you know, somebody managing hose. Now, you can do it without, you know, a hose manager. Uh if the hose hits the door, uh then you got a touchup that you got to deal with. So you can just take and hit the edges and then continue or hit like this first edge and just do your edges as you go. Um I like to just hit my edges straight on all all four of them and then um begin going. Now tops and bottoms interior doors uh don't get weather, don't get moisture. Uh there's no issue with warranties on an interior door. So we don't worry about uh painting the tops and bottoms of the interior door. Now, if you were um on a you know, you had a second story and you're looking down on the top of a door, you might want to, you know, paint the tops of the doors. If we were doing tops or bottoms, we would do them first laying down. Um we just roll them with a weenie roller and then we would set them up to spray them after it dries. This is what it looks like spraying. I'm going to be spraying. You got to just choose a speed that's gonna You really have to just look at the paint going on and in it hitting and just jelling out and being nice and saturated. I overlap 50% as I go. You know, if you go too fast, um the paint's going to dry too fast. It's going to um like uh you know, end up being textured rough. If you don't if you're going too fast, not overlapping enough. It's going to be dry where your overlaps are and not heavy enough. and it's not going to gel out and um have a nice smooth finish either. So, you really have to actually just look and see what you're doing. You have to be really focused and pay attention, see the paint hitting the surface and see it like hitting and being wet enough. If it looks dry, you know, then you need to slow down. If it looks like it's just way way way saturated,…