Interior Doors: Part 1

Hello there!  Lately, I've been working on this time-consuming project.  I originally started it awhile ago, but got stuck.  I'm past that hiccup and I'm rockin' & rollin' now.

All the interior doors in my house were painted an off-white color.  Next to a bright white color (the trim), they look pretty horrible.   The picture below is a good example of the difference in color, but it actually looks worse in person.

On top of that, the previous owners of my house had a kid that liked to draw on the doors with crayon. Thanks, kid.  So, my original plan was to clean the crayon off the doors and then paint them the same color as the trim in the rest of the house:  Behr's Ultra Pure White (satin), which you can buy off-the-shelf.  Simple enough, right?  Somehow, my original two-part plan turned into this:
1)  Take hinges off the doors and door jamb
2)  Strip paint off the hinges
3)  Spray paint the hinges, if they are brass (turns out that they are), in satin nickel to match hardware
4)  Wipe down the doors and clean off the crayon marks
5)  Paint the doors
6)  Paint any trim that still needs it
7)  Put the hinges back on (spray WD-40 on hinge pins)
8)  Hang the doors back up

Yeah, somehow I got it in my head to strip the paint off the hinges - I thought it would make a nice little detail - and that is what turned this into a bigger project.  Here, I'll be explaining my process and tips that you may find helpful. 

So, the hiccup that stalled me on this project was during the hinge removal.  The paint was so thick on some parts of the screw heads and hinges, that I couldn't get the screws off (you can see this in the picture below on the left part of the hinge).  In fact, I stripped 2 of the screws on the first hinge I tried.  Oopsie. 

You can also see here how sloppy painting over the hinges looks

 I had read somewhere that you can get use a screw extractor to get them out.  So, off to Home Depot I went and they recommended this to me.

I followed the instructions (the 3 pictures on the packaging).  First, drill a hole into the screw head.  Hammer the screw extractor into the hole.  Then, using pliers or a wrench, turn the extractor so that it pulls the screw out with it.  Um, yeah, that didn't quite work for me.  The extractor didn't fit tight enough into the hole I drilled in the screw head, so when I tried twisting it out, it didn't get a good grip at all.  This is the sort of thing that happens when you have no arm strength like me.  Note to self:  start lifting my little weights again.  So, my project was on hold for a bit...until Mr. NT was able to help me!   Using the extractor, he was able to get those two stripped screws out with a little bit of muscle.  Sweet!

He also showed me a little trick to get the other painted screws out without stripping them (which my dad tried to tell me about, but for some reason it wasn't translating well enough to me over email).  Using a hammer, I lightly tapped the screwdriver into the screw head to break through the paint and get a good grip.  I then carefully unscrewed it and it just easily came out.  What a concept!  Since the hinges were also stuck on with the paint, I just lightly tapped on it with the hammer and it just popped off.

In the next post, I'll tell you how I stripped the paint from the hinges.   Stay tuned...