Front Door Painting

I started a new project today and its another double front door.   These doors had been faux painted to look like wood but whoever did the work used the wrong kind of paint and they cracked and faded.  Please, if you ever want to paint your front doors use a good 100% acrylic paint like Sherwin Williams exterior Superpaint and no matter what anyone says do not use any oil based paint or clear sealer and yes that means marine varnish or spar varnish.  Just do not do it.

So I was asked to make these doors look great.  This is a big project and a big challenge because the doors where actually faux wood grained twice and both times whoever did the work used an oil based product.  So the doors where painted once and they cracked and started to peel and then painted the same way again and of course started to crack and peel again. 

The only way to resolve this situation and make the front doors acceptable again is to strip off all the painting products that are on them and that is quite the job.  When I first got to the home this morning I broke out my orbital sander and started to sand off the existing finish but that was taking too long and truthfully to hard to do.  So I knew I had to use 'SmartStrip' for this job.  In this first picture you can see on the door to the left where I had sanded some.

By 3pm  I had gotten most of one door stripped and the top of the other.  What a gooey mess stripping off paint is, especially 6 layers.  I hope to get it all off both doors by the end of the day tomorrow.