I am about to embark on painting nearly all the interior doors in my house. These are century-old 5-panel doors with a few layers of existing paint. I plan to take them down to the basement, prep, and spray.
Problem is some of the doors are already slightly sticking to the jams -- they make a cracking sound when you open them. Others aren't sticking but adding one more coat of paint might cause problems. Given there is likely lead paint in there, I can't safely sand or plane down the sides as I would like to do.
Should I use a chemical paint stripper on the edges while preserving the faces? How?
Or should I avoid spraying the edges altogether?
Or should I scrape and sand the sides lightly, hoping for the best?
A few quick thoughts.
1) They make lead test kits (here they are usually readily available at the big box stores)
2) Why does lead prohibit sanding? There are precautions you can take to address the issues lead could pose.
3) Why does lead prohibit planing? most of the exposure risk is inhalation.
I wouldn't mess with strippers trying to get just some of the existing paint off; I would imagine the edge of the remaining paint will likely be compromised and could result in separation and paint failure later.
I would test the door(s) for lead: if the doors have no lead I would use whatever method was easiest; if they do come back positive for lead, I would lay some plastic on the ground (preferable outside or in the garage), put a could saw horses on top of it, place the door on the saw horses, put on good PPE (at least gloves and an N95 mask) and use a
hand plane to scrape the edges. Then I would roll up all of the plastic with shaving planings and dispose of it.
Alternatively you could chemical strip the entire door and start fresh. This is obviously more work but it does give you the chance to fill any dings in the door and remove any damage to the existing paint that will telegraph through your next coat of paint.
I just got done spraying our kitchen in the basement, next time I will set up a booth out of plastic in the garage (mostly to keep dust out). But if I had to do it in the basement again I would as air-tight a paint booth as I could and run an air cleaner (something like this
https://www.homeconstructionimprovement.com/delta-air-cleaner-review-model-50-875/). Over spray from painting hangs in the air and goes EVERYWHERE and settles as a paint colored dust on top of EVERYTHING. I had setup a paint booth bit I didn't put in enough time making it dust proof (now I am paying the price in basement cleaning).
