advice to paint coloured doors and stairs white

[raf300]

Hi

I am in the process of renovating doors and stairs. I would like to know what is the quickest way to paint the doors and stairs white.

What are my options to get the job done quickly but decent finish. I have painted 4 bedroom doors white which were a different colour. I used joncryl and then johnstones acrlic satin. the acrylic satin was pretty good but did leave some brush marks but not many. With the joncryl I had to undercoat a door twice to obliterate the previous orange colour paint. Also I finished with two topcoats of the acrylic.

Here are some pictures of the doors and stairs. 3 of the doors look to be some sort of thin varnish which peels off very easily. 1 is blue (matt emulsion I think).
The stairs are in the same sort of thin varnish but looks as if the stair post has been stained in the past.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/48162547@N05/sets/72157634429075303/

I have read about zinseer but which product is best, BIN or 123?
can I really get away with one coat of Zinsser and then one or two top coats?
Would it be better to dip the doors to remove the paint and then paint white?

With the stairs I was thinking of stainig the post and handrail a dark oak colour with white bannisters. but I am not sure if this is possible due to the difficulty of stripping the post.

any help much appreciated.

 

[Fidget7]

Hi buddy,

My experience of doing similar is that if you want to achieve a reasonable quality finish then preparation and patience is the key. There is no short cut to a good quality finish,

A good rub down with sandpaper followed by usually at least two undercoats. I have not used the products you refer to, but in my experience any decent undercoat (I.e. dulux) x2 should do it, followed by a top coat (or two).

Brush strokes are never something I've been able to completely remove but found that the better the paint, the less obvious the brush strokes.

Insofar as varnishing or staining the hand rail / post is concerned, I'd look at completely stripping back to bare wood with a heat gun and or paint / varnish stripper first and seeing what the quality of wood beneath is like.

Good luck