Hi All.
Well, after an ENORMOUS amount of time and effort spent on researching how to paint a wooden door, applying primer/undercoat twice and then the final gloss coat with the method that's advised in tutorials, I can now report that no matter how careful I was and how hard I tried, it just did not go on properly. This may be a few hours work for most people, but I tried to do everything extremely carefully and neatly and it's taken me weeks to get it done, which makes the final result so, disappointing. All that preparation for nothing!
Here's just some of the problems encountered.
The gloss was applied in the advised order, i.e. mouldings first, then top of door, then down the middle, etc., and I tried very hard to 'keep a wet edge' and do the 'lay off' thing, but all the places where the paint joins can clearly be seen and looks BAD, even though I applied the gloss so thin that I'm sure that if the primer/undercoat was a different colour, it'd clearly show through. If I applied it any thicker, it resulted in runs/sags.
I don't know how to describe this, but towards the end, the paint kept being applied as smudges. I don't mean paint already on the door smudged. I mean the paint being applied to unpainted areas just went on as if there was paint there already and had now smudged. I also started to get an effect where it seemed as if I was painting over large bumps on the surface, but the surface was in fact totally flat and smooth as it's a new door. Where did these invisible 'bumps' come from? I had applied two undercoats and a three-quarters of a door in gloss before this happened. The only thing that I did differently, before this happened was put my paintbrush in a foodbag as advised here. Is it possible that this could have had something to do with it, i.e. paint going all the way up the bristles whilst in the bag? The brushes I used were cheap in price, but they looked and felt quite good, similar to the pack of brushes at B&Q for about £7/8. All that painting and I don't think I had any bristles on the woodwork at all if I can remember correctly.
Accidentally touching the door with my fingers, clothing (which left fibres on the door that are impossible to paint over or remove) and hair sticking to the bottom part of the door when opened/closed all caused me grief, but at least I know these are my mistakes and can be avoided. (I got a bit careless at the end when things started going pear shaped.)
If I were to paint ten more doors, the same thing would happen again as I just don't know what is to be done differently than what I have done already!
Thanks for listening.
