Question
I took on a side project to paint a pre-primed fiberglass entry door for my uncle. I used a plastic bonding primer by xim for the plastic molding, and used BM fresh start for the rest of the door and trim and let it dry for a day. For the top coat I used spectra paints exterior latex enamel with ceramic microspheres. The color was tinted to bear paints bear rug. The first coat over the primer went well, but didn’t flow as well as I liked so for the next coat I added 5 oz Floetrol and 4oz of water to the paint so that I could use my 414 double orifice fine finish tip. I sanded and shot the second coat seven hours later only to watch the nightmare unfold. The paint skidded off the surface giving the appearance as if I poured hot fudge down the front of the door.
I thought I had ruined the batch with the Floetrol, so I had another gallon made, waited a week sanded everything back smooth and went for it again only to have almost the same thing happen - crackling and crawling all over the surface. So I took the gallon into the paint store and upon their investigation they admitted to having overtinted the product. They remade a free gallon for me accept this time I had them make it for me in BM exterior latex enamel. They told me I could wait a day, send back the bad paint and shoot over it with the BM. The BM sprayed way better, layed down well, but when I came back to inspect it guess what. The left over paint underneath it crawled causing a similar effect on the surface. So now I’m back at square one. It has been two days and the paint still isn’t hard enough to sand.
Do I need to strip and start over? Can I use stripper on a fiberglass door? Or do I just wait until its sandable and give it another shot. What was supposed to be something so easy has turned out to be one of the largest finishing problems I’ve ever had.
Forum Responses
(Finishing Forum)
From contributor D:
Is that color a dark brown by chance?
