garage doors - Contractor Talk - Professional Construction and Remodeling Forum

aspenpainting · 07-24-2006, 11:22 PM

hey guys i was wondering what method and product you use for the painting the automatic garage doors? i was thinking if i mask it off and spray it closed it would peel off when i open it. so do i spray in sections? thanks for any advise.

AAPaint · 07-25-2006, 09:07 AM

I almost always spray garage doors. No masking is necessary to do these. I usually cut the casing in by hand where it meets the body of the house, unless it's all one color, then I just spray out the entire door. I make one pass all the way across the door with the gun, then overlap that half way and make another pass all the way across back and forth. Don't stop from end to end, and keep going down until the whole door is painted.

For the bottom, I stick cardboard under the flap so I can spray all the way to the ground.

As for peeling. Those rubber flaps on the side might tend to stick once in a while...it's the nature of the beast. However, if you let it dry properly, you can run your finger up the side between that flap and the door, and it will usually release without any damage. I've NEVER had a problem doing it this way. Good luck!

Woz the Painter · 07-25-2006, 11:58 PM

Garage door openers are not to be painted...

KellyPainting · 07-26-2006, 05:57 PM

AAPAINT.....What are you useing to spray? HVLC or a airless?..
no overspray on the house?... even in wind?

AAPaint · 07-26-2006, 06:35 PM

I spray with an airless, and no, no overspray on the house. If it's windy, we don't spray, we handle other activities. My secret? Cardboard. A helper can block either side with it, and we can do a door in 3 minutes. It can be cut to any shape you like, and we have great success with it. Best shield you can steal out of a dumpster! We frequently use it when spraying soffits on houses. Where soffit meets the roof, we cut it out, slide it under and around that area and spray away. I have no problem spraying doors though, those are EZ.

Jon F · 07-26-2006, 06:56 PM

What would be the prep/product for this?? Every once in awhile we etch garage doors or get a few drips, and I've always thought it would be easier to paint than to try and correct our mistake. So assuming the doors have been washed clean, and they are metal? What would you guys use?? I've seen people doing them with ext. latex, but should you use DTM, or does it matter?? And is there a "standard" sheen that most garage doors are?

KellyPainting · 07-26-2006, 08:32 PM

I recently did a set of 3 large garage doors.... sprayed them ebony black
they look great.. but a slight drag on one door... affraid to tuch up with brush.... high gloss latex..... not very forgiving... by the way AAPAINT, I masked each off for 20 minutes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

KellyPainting · 07-26-2006, 08:33 PM

By the way.. AAPAINT... what tip size do you use? .15?

AAPaint · 07-26-2006, 09:05 PM

You can use exterior latex, just make sure it's a quality 100% acrylic. (your enemy when applied to decks) We usually use SW superpaint. If the paint isn't peeling and is in good shape we just clean and spray our new top coats. If it's peeling, we scrape, sand, peel stop and paint.

As far as masking. Here's what I do. The garage door casing is usually a 2x12 on most homes. If that butts up to a brick exterior or another color (which is typical) we cut in about a 4-6" wide area along the brick so that I don't have to focus any spray in that area. Then, we lay cardboard either on the ground under the weather strip (only if someone else painted it before) or over top of the weather strip all the way across the bottom of the door. Next, I have a helper stand at one side of the door with his cardboard shield held against the brick. I start at that end of the door and spray one strip across to the other side. By the time I get there, he is already holding his shield at that end. We go back and forth rapidly, overlapping each strip 50% of the last one. When we get to the bottom panel of the door, I hold the cardboard against the brick and ground, he holds our metal shield (for better accuracy on the spray line, and to keep the cardboard from blowing up when I trigger the gun) over top of the pieces we laid out. At this point, we spray a block of the bottom panel at a time instead of going across and back.

This whole process from setup to done is literally 10 mins flat for a two car garage door. Most of our garage doors are done either in a satin to match the body, or a semi-gloss accent color depending on the home.

This entire home was sprayed. I don't have a good shot of the doors, but the sheen is just as even as what you see on the soffit.

The tip size I typically use on exteriors is a 215. For those that don't know, it sprays a 4" fan through a .015" orifice. The smaller fan is easy to control and produces much less overspray. The orifice size is the smallest you should use for latex at .015"...smaller sizes like .013 and .011 are what should be used for very thin products like stains. For thick latexes, you could bump up to a .017, and then there's the .019 that should be used for lacquers and heavy bodied paints.

Anyway, first number x2 (2x4=4" fan pattern) denotes fan spray size, second two numbers denote orifice size (215 has .015" orifice)...

Jon F · 07-26-2006, 09:25 PM

....okay....THESE kind of garage doors. Are these metal? They feel kinda flexible to me like vinyl. That sheen looks great AA, is that gloss? What would you guys do with doors like the pics below?? (I don't think they are painted initially, I think it is baked, or whatever is done to gutters, etc)

This to me, in my area, is your standard garage door, on every house under 250K.

Jon F · 07-26-2006, 09:32 PM

....and that door to the side of the garage. Metal. Let's say it's in good shape, just has overspray, etc. and want to re-paint. Would you sand first? Then latex? Dtm?

Jon F · 07-26-2006, 09:33 PM

....and while we are at it, have any of you guys ever done anything to a metal roof????

AAPaint · 07-26-2006, 09:47 PM

They are probably aluminum doors, and we would treat them the same. The big thing is to make sure when re-painting aluminum doors is to make sure you remove all of the efflorescence of the old paint because this is common. It gets chalky just like gutters do. If the casing around that door gets painted, we would handle it the same. I just can't tell what kind of casing is around that door.

Now, if that casing receives stain and not paint, we would mask it with a tape machine and a 12" roll of paper. The rest of the method wouldn't change at all, and I can probably mask one of these in 3-5 mins. We would paint these before staining because we can often wipe the stain drips right off a fresh coat of anything washable like satin sheen or higher with a half dry spirits rag.

Here's a cedar home we restored from BLACK recently. These two doors were sprayed in under 15 mins using the described methods. They're not aluminum, but gives another good example. This house is done in ready seal natural cedar.

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AAPaint · 07-26-2006, 09:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jon Fife

....and that door to the side of the garage. Metal. Let's say it's in good shape, just has overspray, etc. and want to re-paint. Would you sand first? Then latex? Dtm?

Yes, we would sand first, tack clean, and then follow up with whatever is already on it. If it has oil, we would stick with oil. If it's latex, we would do latex again. On new factory primed doors, we commonly use SW super paint (acrylic latex)....if we can stick to latex we do for environmental and health reasons, not to mention some of today's latex paints are as good as any oil... I save the DTM for things like lintels, roof vents, galvanized flashing, iron railings, or any other bare metal surface.

Metal roofs is one place I draw the line because of the complexity of painting that thing without falling off, lol!

KellyPainting · 07-26-2006, 10:01 PM

Latex is always better on a metal roof if you can use it.....
because.. it will expand and contract with the changing temperatures..
when oil will crack easier...... doing 2 this week...

Jon F · 07-26-2006, 10:02 PM

...really??? Plain ole' acr. latex??? What kind of durability do you get??

KellyPainting · 07-27-2006, 08:51 PM

My roof is a section above windows.... not the whole house.... just a small part that was originally copper..... on a victorian... if you mean a whole roof... then I'm not sure. My Ben Moore guy just explained it to me recently.

Brushslingers · 07-27-2006, 09:12 PM

Yes, regular latex. Most metal roofs are powder coated from the factory, depending on your prep and type of bonding primer, you can get an easy 5 years out of it. You just really need to be extra careful of cars on the ground below you.

Tom Rohland · 07-28-2006, 04:26 AM

[quote=AAPaint] The big thing is to make sure when re-painting aluminum doors is to make sure you remove all of the efflorescence of the old paint because this is common. It gets chalky just like gutters do.

AA,

Not sure what you're thinking about but..........

Effloresence is a fancy sounding term for the slang word ("Salting").

Peeling is a common result of salting.

IT IS THE CRYSTAL-LIKE WATER AND SALT DEPOSITS THAT FORM ON MASONRY SURFACES and sometimes on the interior ceiling and walls where the plaster didn't cure properly.

It is usually a light gray or white crystal deposit or powder. It occurs when salt-like crystals or alkali in the internal part of the masonry surfaces dissolve and then travels to the surface when water evaporates from off the masonry surface.

AA, not sure what you're thinking about...............

Hope this helps.

Tom Rohland, Jr.
Ranger Painting & Pressure Cleaning, Inc.
Lake Mary, Florida

AAPaint · 07-28-2006, 12:18 PM

Sorry, I use that term to describe chalky stuff. I have seen this same thing on a number of substrates though, so what would it then be considered? Just chalkiness? Surfactants? One example I can think of is hardiboard siding with flat paints.....