Flawless Finish! How to Spray Doors Lying Flat with an Airless Paint Sprayer (No Runs or Drips)

All right. So, I'm going to give you, you know, a few of my tips and recommendations. You know, how to spray a door. This is actually how to spray a door specifically laying down, cuz it's a little bit different spraying a door laying down versus, you know, standing up. This is the man door going out of a garage. This is kind of a little bit unusual. This is a PVC type door. It's got a smooth finish. It's very critical that you uh prep it properly, dust it properly, mask it properly. I've already painted the opposite side of this door, the interior color. It's the color and the paint of the inside of the garage, the trim of the inside of the garage. So, now we're working on the exterior side. And because it's a smooth door, it's a new house, we want to get this side up perfect. We want it to look, you know, super smooth. We don't want to risk any runs, um, spits, etc. We don't want to deal with it hanging on a jam and with hardware stuff. It's a brand new door, brand new slab, so it doesn't even have hardware installed. So, I don't have to deal with that, which is nice. So you can see, you know, how we've masked and prepped this so far. When I spray this because the opposite side, if the opposite side's already painted, you don't want overspray getting on that because you just spend a lot of time finishing it. So the way we mask it is we drop nine uh 9in plastic with um inch tape and tack it down with inch tape just like this. It hangs down and whatever you're setting on it, we lay it on buckets, sometimes stack buckets. These are saw horses. There's a lot of different ways you can do it. But you want your paper, you know, tacked down. So when you're spraying, you know, the force of this the sprayer, if you're hitting it this way, it doesn't flip it up onto your freshly painted surface. If it flips it up on the door, you're going to have to immediately wipe that door off, get that paint off, let it dry, and reshoot it and stuff. So I say this because it's happened to me multiple times. paper flipping up. Whether it be outside, you know, cuz the wind flipped it up or whether the pressure from the gun flipped it up. It's happened to me multiple times. Bugs have landed on doors like this multiple times. Beetles walked across it. The cotton from cottonwood trees have landed on it and stuff. So, we're inside of a a protected area so I don't have, you know, or less likely to have any of those um elements, you know, once I spray this door. Now, when we spray a door like this, typically an exterior color, this is um a really dark green, it's typically going to cover in one coat. We're shooting it one coat. If you're like going to be some vibrant color, red or something like that, it might be multiple coats. My goal is to shoot this thing in one coat. Now, typically when I'm spraying doors, I'm using fine finish tips. On this door, I'm using a Triek 510. So, I'll either use a 510 or 310. Those are the two tips I use. A 510 is just going to make you be able to paint it in less passes faster. Less passes means less likelihood of spits or things going wrong. So, you want to get your gun set up. Gun set up. I like to use extensions a lot of the time cuz I can reach all all the way across the door and and and shoot it down with an extension. This door is not too bad, but if I can't reach all the way across safely, then you know, I'll do three cores of the door, walk to the other side, and shoot the door. But here, I don't have to worry about edges. The edges are all masked off. The sides of it are the inside color. I'm just spraying the face. So, I'm going to just spray the face of it. Now, spraying the face. I have angles right here um on this door. This um the raised sides right here, lowered panel right here. So, keep conscious and aware. I don't want to spray against that cuz I won't get it covered 100%. I want to spray directly down on it. And I'm going to start spraying the door. You never want to start spraying on the door cuz even though there's no extension, you could get a spit. So, I'm going to start spraying off the door. Come all the way off the door on the opposite end and do your passes off the door. Never start on the door. Never stop on the door. or when I'm done, I don't release the trigger right here either, cuz you can get a spit there. Also, if you're using a short extension or any type of extension, the longer the extension, the larger the spit you're going to get and more spit. So, I'm not using an extension at all um right now, but your gun uh even without an extension can spit. You got, you know, holes right here that could kick dust out of the holes. Probably should stuff paper down in those holes, you know, to keep dust from kicking out of there. We dusted it off. Dust it off with a duster brush, then wiped it off with a microfiber cloth. If you have to do any sanding, you want to do your sanding of the door. Um, if it's been painted before and it's a gloss or something like that, you want to definitely del gloss that by mechanically sanding it. But this is a primed uh PVC door. Bottoms and tops don't need to be uh painted on this style of door. You'll know cuz the door will have a warning thing right here saying, you know, in order for, you know, uh the warranty to uh be in place and not voided, you have to coat the top and bottom of the door. That's not the case with this door. So, I'm going to get ready to shoot this door. You're going to see, you know, how it looks, you know, me shooting it. So, I definitely want to uh fill these holes up right here. Don't want anything kicking out of these holes. So you can see I just stuff paper down inside there. [Applause] You don't want it sticking out on the sides of your door at all. You want it big enough that it's not going to come flying out either. Um so big enough it'll actually stick to cuz we put tape on the opposite side of the door so no paint could go through the holes either and get overspray. So now the my the question might be I think somebody said something you know one of my social media accounts the other day that overspray is going to kick down and get on the other side of the door with that paper. Um I can tell you from my experience never once in my career have I had paint curl around that paper and come up that 9-in paper and come up. Gravity wants to take it down and it takes it down. Pump is set up. uh pumps. You I get asked, you know, what pressure? Typically 2200 PSI. When I'm spraying trim or exteriors, pumps set at 2200 PSI. I'm always going to take a few test sprays and begin spraying. You should uh strain your paints. If you don't strain your paints, you can get spits, clogs, and stuff that can cause issues with spraying the door. This is going to take, you know, multiple passes, and spits are just part of the game when it comes to airless spraying. and you just hope it doesn't spit, you know, on the door when you're spraying the front door. It actually spit on the first pass, but it ended up leveling out. So, let's see how it goes. You can actually start spraying, you know, right here and work your way across. Then you're leaning over what you just sprayed, or you can start right here and work your way that direction. I don't have a problem working over what I just sprayed, but that's something to think about. Good practice, bad practice. Um, I typically like to just start right in front of me, get in my rhythm and pace when I'm spraying it. I'm going to start spraying it. First pass is going to come across here. And then you're just going to overlap 50% as you go. You got to watch when the paint's hitting the door and you're you're kind of seeing, you know, how the coverage is. Do I need to slow up? Do I need to speed down? Seeing um what's going on. You got to see it. You got to hear it. And you got to feel it coming out of the gun in order to get a good finish. All right, so here we go. Going to start spraying Looks like it's spraying out pretty good. When I look at it, it looks like it has a super nice finish across the whole door. Now, when I was spraying this first pass, cuz you're overlapping 50% as you go. So, you want to get 100% coverage. So your first pass when you overlap 50% that first pass it won't have two passes over it. So I hit the first pass twice and I hit the last pass twice. I had this angle like a 45° angle. I know when I was coming across straight down, it doesn't hit it as well just straight down. I I noticed like right off the bat I'm paying attention of everything that's going on. I'm paying attention to the paint that is it covering 100%. You know, in the one pass, I see it looked pretty good. On the second pass, I noticed it covered 100%. I was watching that, paying attention to that. I noticed straight down on the first pass on the 45° angle. It wasn't covering it as well as I thought. And so, I just slightly turned the gun to face the 45° angle. It's very subtle, very slight. And then when I came over here, I kind of slightly changed it to face that the 45 degree angle. Also, when I went to the opposite side, I did the same exact thing. When I get to the ends, I'm coming across to the end. I come out and just fade it out just a little bit. Come across here, just fade it up just a little bit. You see, I've overpassed, got overspray both sides. One thing, you know, this is exterior paints. I mean, some people are going to look at it and say, you know, it's eggshelly. Exterior paints, when you paint them, they look um like really eggshelly, and then they begin to dry out over time and level out. Exterior paints don't give you like a glass like finish like interior enamels do. They they act differently. They spray differently. A color like this, heavybodied, tons and tons of tint to create this color. the paint. It doesn't atomize as well as lighter colors. So, you won't get like a like a super smooth finish, but this will level out very very nice. I'm going to I look at it. It looks like it's covered. You'll 100% whether you think it needs two coats, one coat, two coats, you can, you know, do another pass over it after it dries. It'll be dry in about an hour. Do another pass on it and then pull the masking and you're good to go. But it looks like it's covered 100%. To me, it looks pretty dang good. I got a nice even finish across the whole board. What I'm looking for right here across the whole door. I'm looking for anything that doesn't match up. Is it have the same finish across the whole door? Or is there something then that looks like light? What I would say like kind of a dry feather because I went too fast or I didn't overlap 50%. I looked at it. I can't tell from this lighting. I have to get over into this lighting to actually see it cuz I get a reflection and glare coming through the window. I can see it 100% from top to bottom. It has the exact same uh finish from top to bottom. It's good to go and it's going to dry out and look awesome. So, there it is. how I go about spraying a difficult uh door on the exterior of a new