Trim and Door Enamel

Enamel Is Where a Repaint Gets Judged

Nobody stands close to a wall. People stand close to doors, they put their hands on casing, and they look along a baseboard from across the room where the light rakes down it. Trim is the part of an interior that gets inspected, and it is the part that shows every shortcut: brush marks that never flowed out, roller stipple on a door face, a run down the edge of a stile, dust nibs standing up in the film like sand.

On the older Santa Monica buildings there is a second problem sitting under all of that. Trim in a nineteen twenties bungalow or a courtyard apartment from the fifties has been coated eight or ten times. The profile is soft, the quirks and beads have filled in, and the last two coats may well be a hard oil enamel that nothing modern wants to stick to without help.

What We Do Before Any Enamel Is Opened

Doors come off their hinges and go on horses. That single decision is most of the difference in the finished result, because enamel flows out flat on a horizontal surface and sags on a vertical one. Hardware is removed and bagged by opening rather than masked, since masked hardware is how you end up with a hard paint edge you can feel with a fingernail.

Then the surfaces get degreased. Kitchen and bathroom trim, and the area around every handle and light switch, carries body oils and cooking residue that a light sand only polishes in. We wash with a detergent solution and rinse before sanding, not after.

Sanding is about profile and adhesion, not about removing paint. We flatten runs and old drips, cut back the gloss over the whole surface so the new film has something mechanical to hold, and open up the detail where it has been buried. Where the existing coating is a hard alkyd or where the sheen is high we prime with a bonding primer instead of hoping the sand is enough. Stains, water marks and tannin bleed on old fir get a stain blocking primer, because a stain that comes through the topcoat comes through the second one too.

Joints get caulked and tooled. Casing to wall, mitre joints that have opened, baseboard tops. Tooled with a wet finger, cut back where the bead is heavy, and left to skin before anything goes over it.

The Coating

We work mostly in waterborne alkyds on interior trim and doors. They flow and level like a traditional oil enamel, they block reasonably once cured, and they do not amber the way a true oil does over a white. On exterior doors and jambs the same logic applies with a coating rated for it, and the south and west facing doors are the ones that need the full film build because they take the afternoon sun.

Two coats, with a de-nib between them. That is a light hand sand with a fine abrasive to knock down dust nibs and raised grain, then a vacuum and a tack. It takes an hour on a house and it is the entire reason one finish feels like glass and another feels like fine sandpaper.

The last thing worth saying is about drying versus curing. Enamel is dry to touch in a few hours and it is not cured for two to three weeks, longer in a damp coastal week. During that period the film is soft. Doors get closed onto latex tape or left ajar, drawers stay out, and nothing gets stacked on a freshly finished shelf. Blocking, where two painted surfaces stick together and tear when they are separated, is the most common way a good enamel job gets ruined in the week after we leave, and it is entirely avoidable if somebody tells you.

Call (424) 305-7634 and we will look at your doors.