Painting repurposed wood

[CatWhisperer]

I’ve repurposed 3 old doors for my coops. I just sanded, cleaned and painted them.

 

[Folly's place]

Good find!
You could test that paint for lead, and then know what you are dealing with. Lead test kits are easy to find. Then, paint or stain both sides, and enjoy.
Mary

 

[Quackter]

[QUOTE="K0k0shka, post: 21764540, member: I have a professional respirator mask from having to deal with lead contamination on my property, so I was definitely thinking of wearing that .[/QUOTE]

Just a caution, Lead can get in through your skin too. The mask is only as good as you use it, fit test every time if you are relying on it. I have no idea whether that door is lead painted or not. Just use caution, the paint on strippers, that adhere to the paint are going to be your safest bet, just scrape of. The surface of the wood will have some lead after stripped, you're going to be abating it by painting over, my suggestion would be getting your primer on and then do any puttying and touch up work. It's been a few years since I've had to go get blood drawn every week and set through hours of classes, but from them, if I thought it was lead paint, I'd just be looking on Craigslist for another. And I am a cheap skate.

 

[K0k0shka]

I went to HD and got a paint stripper. I really don't want to be sanding that paint. I don't actually know that it has lead in it, but the door is SO old that I bet it does (doesn't look to have been repainted more recently either, that's just the original paint with wood underneath it).

 

[Quackter]

One other thing, I am no expert by any means, but just from being around it an through enough BS, "so we're not liable classes". Be careful with old respirator cartridges, some of them, which specific ones you'd have to look up, actually become toxic. Me: "The milk is 2 days out of date, but it smells OK, cheerios it is" "This 10 year cartridge is a week out of date, get me new one"

 

[K0k0shka]

Good point, I will check the cartridges, thanks!

 

[Folly's place]

Many of us more mature folks met with a lot of lead, and some asbestos, in years gone by. I have a measurable blood lead level, too low to treat, I'm sure from early exposure.
I wouldn't sand that door either, and would test it for lead.
Mary

 

[K0k0shka]

I thought I'd update this thread in case anybody finds it and wants to know what happened. So... The paint stripper failed miserably. Or rather, it succeeded in removing the top layer of paint, reluctantly, after soaking overnight, but revealed several other layers of paint underneath, which it failed to remove. I thought I'd try scraping it with a manual planer (thinking it would be less dusty). Even worse. I hacked at it with a hammer and chisel. What finally worked was the electric planer, hooked up to a shop vac to reduce the dustiness (I wore a respirator mask... back when they weren't so hard to find!) It got all the flat open surfaces. I removed what I could from the grooves with the chisel. Then painted both sides of the door. It's been on the coop for 10 months now, holding up just fine.

Here's my hero:

After the paint job (this is the interior side, painted to match the interior of the coop):

I painted the exterior side black, and looks like this:

In conclusion, I would not recommend a paint stripper for something this old, which might have a gazillion layers of paint to get through, since the stripper apparently only strips one layer at a time. The electric planer worked wonderfully on the flat areas, just not in the grooves and corners. If you don't have access to an electric planer, then it's going to take a lot of sweat and/or several jugs of stripper.

 

[21hens-incharge]

It came out great!

 

[K0k0shka]

It came out great!

Thanks! It was frustrating to get there, but I'm very happy with the result.