Is this really how long a paint job lasts?

[claudedebussy]

i had my house painted by professional decorators about 4 years ago. already the paint is peeling off all the woodwork. the front door looks disgusting.

i don't think they sanded the woodwork or used primer / undercoat. i'm 99% sure they didn't on the front door. Paint is peeling off in huge chunks.

i'm going to do it all myself now. properly.

or aibu and expecting too much?

no-one else i know paints the exterior of their house every 4 years.

I can tell you how long did the paint lasted on the wooden French door (south facing) which I did myself. I stripped it, used both electric and chemical stripper as I was impatient :).
It was very warm summer so I painted primer, undercoat and overcoat. With the required time between. All paints were then from Dulux - it lasted for over 10 years.
Someone painted my front door another year using one of those all in one paints from B&Q and even though I did the same preparation it lasted around 3 or 4 years.

I am always using Dulux nowadays - interior and exterior and have noticed, that when paint is allowed to dry between coats you will get an excellent outcome.

I live in Surrey, so weather conditions are perhaps kinder than therest of the country.

Maryz - I asked mine to be retouched 3 years ago. I think it's was worth doing it right like that - I am planning to replace them for PVC's, only because they are drafty, but the new regulations mean I am forced to go for triple glazing, which is going to be very, very expensive :(

Maybe I should change profession and charge a lot, as painting my windows took me ages, well the prep took ages as I was stripping 30 years of paint from them

What colour is your door?
Red and burgundy paint absorbs UV and lasts 5 minutes, while bye pain reflects it and lasts years.

This is a great shame because my parents garage door looks much classier deep wine colour, but it's back to pale blue.

my door is white and i live in london. plus, it's under cover as the roof juts out a bit, so not much sun or rain. no good reason to be in such a poor state. the places that have started peeling are where my bunch of keys knocks against it, and along the joins of wood.

maryz, i saw those triple-glazed wooden windows. cost the same as a small outer hebridean island with it's own ferry.

pigletjohn, many many thanks for your wise words. you have given me more information in your couple of posts than 'painting for dummies' and a dvd on how to decorate walls and woodwork (which bizzarely didn't actually use paint but wallpaper - even on the ceiling!!).

although your last post has thrown me into a spin: 'For indoor work you can use white acrylic primer undercoat'. i am not only doing the front door but the entire porch, inside and out. i was hoping to just buy a can of each type of paint for external use and just use it inside too. can i treat the inside of the porch and front door in exactly the same way as the outside? some of the windows get a real hammering from the sun and it regularly gets up to 40 degrees in there. is it just that it would be overkill to use outdoor paint inside, or really not advisable?

can you recommend a good resource to find out stuff like this please?

my plan is for front door, external windows and internal windows (of the porch, not the whole house):

• strip the thick layers of paint off
• sand
• use aluminium wood primer
• then undercoat (oil based)
• the top coat (oil based)

i will not be using f&b lulworth blue. i shall be using dulux white. dammit. although the internal ceiling will be f&b borrowed light

the back story to this is that we've bought our neighbour's house. we live in a very small semi-detatched house with 3 kids and they're all squashed into 1 bedroom. with next door we'll double the size of our house for a much more reasonable price than buying a 4 bedroom house in the area.

to save costs (which are considerable given the state) i will be doing all the decorating of the entire house, from guttering to radiators. i. am. clueless. and quite overwhelmed. so i'm trying to learn as much as possible as quickly as possible. soon i'm going to have 3 front doors to repaint!

gosh that was long.

you can use an outdoor paint indoors

except that white oil-based paint tends to yellow if it is not in good light (close to a window will do) so a white water-based paint will stay bright better inside. (all the new low-VOC paint formulae suffer from yellowing). The Dulux Trade Gloss in cans with blue lids is a revised formula that is supposed to resist yellowing indoors.

I have been quite disappointed with eggshell indoors, to me it looks like undercoat. I prefer Satinwood.

But oil-based gloss is toughest outside.

A power sander will be useful on flat surfaces, and a small detail sander for fiddly bits. Measure the width of the panels in your doors, as a large sander may be too big to fit. For mouldings and rounded surfaces do it by hand, your fingers will soon get stronger. Wear a mask and goggles, and get some blue disposable gloves. Scrape old paint out of the joints of a panelled door, filling them with paint will make the paint crack more.

As for the chips in paint caused by keys, look out for nice covered keyhole escutcheons, and finger-plates to match that you can position under the keyhole. Fancy brass edges are very difficult to polish, smooth ones will be easy. Stainless lasts longer than chrome. Drill the screwholes before painting, but take off all door furniture. If you are having new locks or hinges, or having the door planed to fit, get that done before painting. The furry "brush pile" draught excluder is good, verify that it will fit before painting. If you have several doors and are buying new locks, go to a proper locksmith and ask for them to be suited to the same key.

Pay special attention to painting the top and bottom of the doors, these are the most neglected surfaces, and the most likely to get water penetration.

If you are ever having the door hinges changed, I recommend you get lift-off hinges as they make it so easy to remove the door for redecorating or moving furniture.

thank you very much, pigletjohn.

i have bought a bosch power sander which has quite a small plate as i thought that would be more versatile in the long run.

thanks for the tips re. door furniture. i have the original fittings which under the grime i suspect are brass so i'll probably stick with that and try and get a key thingy to match.

great tip about not using paint to fill cracks. that would have been something i'd have resorted to. i'm planning on investing in a pot of ronseal high performance wood filler.

i also thought i'd splash out (forgive pun) on some purdy brushes as i'm going to be getting a lot of use out of them. the cheapie brushes i've used in the past have shed a lot of hair.

the previous decorators did not paint the tops of the doors at all, nor under the window sills. nor close to the coving, or in difficult corners. basically anywhere they could get away with it. i plan on doing a much better job

i think i'll go for indoor paint inside then. i hate that yellowing effect. it looks really awful and has happened to a lot of our internal woodwork.

good tip about the door hinges - i probably won't in the short term but in the long term that's something to keep in mind.

do you reckon i should actually remove the front door totally? it will be very difficult to do, but would it be worth it?

lifting the door off, and putting it on a workmate or similar, does make it easier to sand and paint. But it will be heavy.

yes, and i am a 90 pound weakling i wish

i will leave it on then.