Why do my freshly painted doors and drawers stick shut?

Blocking is a specific and well-known property of paint films: a coating that feels dry to the touch can still soften and stick when another painted surface is pressed against it, particularly in warm or humid conditions. It catches people out on doors against frames, drawers in carcasses, cupboard doors, hinged shutters and painted shelves with objects standing on them.

Step by step

1. Free it slowly and from the hinge side outwards.Do not yank. Work a thin flexible blade — a putty knife or a plastic scraper — into the joint and run it steadily along the length of the bond, releasing it progressively. Pulling a blocked door open tears the film off one surface and leaves it on the other.
2. Touch in any damage once you have separated them.Where the film has torn, let it dry, abrade the edges smooth, and touch in with a thin coat. Expect to feather it well beyond the damage so the repair does not read as a patch.
3. Keep the surfaces apart while the film cures.Wedge the door slightly open, leave drawers out or ajar, and do not stack or stand anything on painted shelves. How long depends on the paint — water-based trim paints need several days at least, and traditional oil-based gloss needs considerably longer.
4. Read the cure time on the tin, not the recoat time.Touch-dry, recoatable and fully cured are three different figures. Blocking resistance develops with full cure. On many trim paints, full hardness is a matter of weeks in cool weather.
5. Reduce the contact where it keeps happening.Doors that block repeatedly usually have paint on the surfaces that meet. Consider whether the door stop face and the closing edge need to be painted at all, and if they do, apply thinner coats there. On windows, painting the meeting faces is what bonds a casement to its frame.
6. Use talc or wax as a stopgap on a surface in use.A light dusting of talcum powder, or a wipe of a hard wax on the contact face, will stop a partly cured film from bonding while it hardens. It is a temporary measure and should be cleaned off before any further coats.
7. Choose a paint with better block resistance if it is a recurring problem.This is a stated property on trade product data sheets. Some water-based trim paints are markedly better than others, and a paint destined for a door that must be shut in a warm house is worth choosing on that basis.

Tips

• Warm, humid weather is when blocking happens. A door painted in August and closed the same evening is the classic case.
• Paint doors and drawer fronts off their hinges and flat where you can, and rehang them once the film has hardened.
• If a door has to be closed for security, close it against a strip of greaseproof paper laid over the stop, and remove it once the film has cured.

Common mistakes

• Closing a freshly painted door overnight — The two coated faces bond while nobody is watching, and opening it in the morning tears the film off one of them.
• Pulling a stuck door open sharply — It removes paint in strips from the door or the frame and leaves a repair far worse than the original problem.
• Applying an extra coat to a surface that has already blocked once — More film thickness means longer to cure and worse blocking. Fix the timing, not the coverage.

If it doesn't work

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