Repainting external doors

[bikeit]

I will soon be repainting two wooden tongue and groove external shed doors,
I have already sanded down the doors and there are lots of very small cracks in the wood, but the cracks are not deep enough to fill with filler, so should i spot undercoat these and wait for the paint to dry lightly sand and give the whole door a coat of undercoat, or is this totally wrong?

 

[JohnD]

T&G shed doors expand and contract a lot with the weather. You will find unpainted lines appear at every joint

My preference is to use a waterbased shed-and-fence stain, which will give them a woody colour and repel rain while allowing them to breathe. It is thin enough to get into the white joints so you can give them an extra coat in a dry sunny spell.

 

[bikeit]

If the doors were new i would use shed and fence stain, but the doors have previously been painted.

 

[TheDec]

An ideal paint in this situation would be Sadolin Superdec.

Dec

 

[dcdec]

Even if the cracks are small, you can still skim over them with a lightweight external filler, rub down, prime the filled areas and undercoat and gloss. Undercoat and primers can fill minor imperfections but its not the most effective way of doing it. You could look for a primer/paint that has a higher paint film build so the superdec is a good shout for that. Bedec barn paint is also meant to be quite good although i havn't used it

 

[bikeit]

Thanks for the help.
when painting the doors where should i start and finish?

 

[TheDec]

After prep work from the top down.

Dec

 

[bikeit]

Do i paint the v groove first with a small brush then paint the remainder of the door with a larger brush working from left to right top to bottom, or work along the lengths of the wood on the door from top to bottom.
Hope you can make sense of this.

 

[TheDec]

If it was me I would work both in downward sections across the door flooding the paint into the groves at the same time, dont make the sections to large you will need to keep a wet edge. Yet you should adopt a technique that suits you.

Dec