Front Door Exterior Paint Sandable?

So I painted my front door today which was pretty tired looking.

Sanded all over with 120. Cleaned. Paint with a premium exterior paint + primer.

My brushes are cheap and kept losing bristles and leaving brush strokes into the paint so I switched to a roller which worked alot better.

Because of the roller perhaps it wasn't the right material there is a small amount of texture to the paint.

Also I used a qt. Waited about 5 min in between coats and applied it all in about an hour.

Kind of going into the 6 window areas first then paint the flat surfaces second rounding out with uniform strole across the length of the door.

It's been drying for an hour or two now in the sun. And looks pretty good. I'm just not sure if I wanna sand the small amount of texture.

I've got a nice new orbital with 220 ready to do so.






Lemme know ur thoughts. Thx.

 

You can see it better, but the pictures show no horrible bumps.

You always want a wet edge, no need to try to smooth the paint out with a final roll, the paint will kind of self level.

The final roll makes the finish look worse rather than better.

*I noticed you said you waited 5 minutes between coats, hold on for the paint pros..... this is not good.

 

I assume you used a latex paint and generally they don't sand well. Any heavy sanding usually 'melts' a little of the paint clogging up the sandpaper in short order. A light sanding followed by a slightly thinned coat of paint may help.

5 minutes between coats is not long enough! generally you need hours between coats of brushed/rolled on paint. Were you applying the paint in the hot sun? when paint dries too fast it doesn't always create a good bond with the underlying surface.

I assume you are referring to the door's panels ?? or are the windows in a side lite?

Generally brushed paint looks better on a door than rolled. Many will roll the paint on and then use a brush to 'tip it off' basically taking just the tip of the brush to get rid of the roller stipple. There are those with poor brushing skills that get better results with just a roller.

 

I think the previous posters are pretty much summed up why your job came out looking like it did. To emphasize further the point that I think is most important, you should be doing the painting in a cool dry place definitely out of the sun (inside of your garage maybe?).