With there being so many new home owners out there who have just bought their very first home and are looking to do some home improvements, we have noticed a number of questions about how they are able to paint their homes to get them to look as good as possible. One of the more common problems that we see beginners making time and time again is making easily avoid mistakes with paint that make it sticky.
As we have noticed more and more people reaching out for advice on how to prevent sticky paint on doors recently, we have decided to publish this article to try and help as many of our readers as possible. Thankfully, having sticky paint on your doors is very common and a large number of first time home owners and first time home decorators have this easily avoidable issue.
Throughout our article below, we will be going over how you are able to totally avoid having sticky paint on your doors as well as how to fix stick paint on your doors if you have already painted them. You are able to use the table of contents below to quickly skip to each section of our article too helping you save time and get the answers that you need quicker.
Why Is The Paint On Your Door Sticky?
The most common causes of the paint on your door being sticky are down to the paint being wet, not using a primer when you should, using the wrong sealant, and using the wrong type of paint for the surface of the door. These are all very easy to avoid if you haven’t painted your door yet and often easy to fix if you have already painted it.
When it comes to the primer and paint type for your door surface, you will have to do your own research but at the time of writing, the majority of indoor doors are made from wood or strong chipboard. Both of these usually don’t need a primer and the vast majority of indoor paints will work fine on them without the need for a specialist paint.
The majority of our readers will probably not need a sealant for an indoor door either and regular paint will work fine. This leaves the paint being wet as the main cause that your door may be sticky and there are a few causes of this. Your paint may just need longer to dry due to the time of the year or the weather in your local area but rooms such as your kitchen and bathroom have higher moisture in them causing paint to naturally take longer to dry anyway.
How To Fix Sticky Paint On Doors!
A common way to fix sticky paint on doors is to put small amounts of flour or talcum powder on them to absorb the water that is causing them to be sticky. Talcum powder does tend to offer better performance and be able to dry the paint out quicker to prevent them from being sticky.
There is one slight potential issue with this though and its based around if you have used a cheap, low quality paint. We would highly recommend that you use a decent door paint if possible as it is usually only $5 or so more than the cheaper paints but offers much better performance.
These decent paint options have better ingredients in more accurate ratios ensuring that they dry as quickly as possible once applied to your doors. In addition to this, they also usually have better color retention and shouldn’t have as many potential issues with UV light getting in through your windows causing problems with the paint either.
What To Do If Your Door Paint Is Sticking To Trim!
If you have just applied the paint to your door and it is sticking to your trim then try not to close the door fully until the paint has dried. If the paint has already dried and overhangs causing it to stick to your trim then try to sand down the excess paint that is overhanging causing the problem.
So many beginners seem to get nervous when it comes to dealing with overhanging paint by sanding it down but there really is no need. There is no need to go out and get a sander as some cheap sand paper that costs less than a dollar can easily get the job done.
All you have to do is rub the sand paper over the area of the door with the overhang of paint that is catching on your trim until it is smooth. You can test that the door closes and opens correctly without catching on your trim after sanding the dry paint down and then you shouldn’t have any additional issues with it.
How To Remove Sticky Paint From Wood Doors!
The easiest way to remove sticky paint from wood doors is to use a chemical based paint remover although a natural, citrus based paint remover can offer good results without needing harsh, artificial chemicals. The process to use these products will change depending on the formulas so read the label and do as instructed.
Provided that you are using a decent door paint, you shouldn’t have an issue when it comes to removing the paint from the door and it should life right off with minimal standing. Some of the cheaper paint formulas on the market can cause problems due to their low quality ingredients staining the wood on the door even when a high quality paint remover is used.
We see people try to sand stick paint off their wood doors but if the paint is sticky due to not being dry this is a mistake and will cause you issues. Paint that has not dried fully is a total pain to sand off and takes a ton of effort for poor results. A chemical based paint remover is much easier and will definitely deliver better results than sanding wet sticky paint.
Conclusion
That brings our article going over how to avoid sticky paint on doors to a close. It is actually very easy to avoid sticky paint on your doors when you know what causes it as explained in our article above but we know that some of our readers will have already applied their paint to their doors. This is why we also included a number of ways to remove sticky door paint too as well as fix sticky paint that is catching on your trim as that is a common issue too.
