# Elevator painting



## mikehan1234

I am painting 9 story building elevators. There are four elevators per floor so all together there are 36 elevator doors to be painted. Since I am working in the evening I can stop 3 elevators and let one operate. Problem is I need to paint the sides of the doors where it closes. It is a metallic paint and requires 10 hours drying time. If I paint one floor then I would have to wait until doors dry before I can move on to other floor because I cannot close doors while they are not dry. If I work on this schedule it would take me 18 days to paint all elevator doors. Does anyone have good idea about this?
Thanks.


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## timhag

May have to paint inner lips of the doors, let dry, then move on to the outer panels. Maybe someone else has a better idea. May take you more than 18 days my brother.


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## timhag

oh.....welcome to the site


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## painter jeff

try a Japanese drier,for faster drying..and a couple fans


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## vermontpainter

I never thought I would say this, but I think I would prefer to paint stairs.


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## Housepainter

Check with "Building Super" They should have a way to open the doors without the elevator being at the individual floors. You would have to make sure the areas was secure so no one would enter the open shaft area. But you could do each shaft and the doors for the nine floors. Dependent upon how many you can paint per day would make the job any where from a two day to four day job.


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## CApainter

How about painting as many doors and floors as possible, closed, then address the insides separately. Maybe use a faster drying product thats similar in color. People don't notice that small area as much as the faces.


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## CApainter

Just checked the original post date. You've probably finished the job. Hope everything turned out. It did get me thinking how I'd approach the same situation.


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## timhag

Wonder what happened to Mikehan? He pulled a hit and run on us.


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## paulingrad

we never got to find out what type of paint he was using. I would assume for lift doors a cellulose-based paint would be used on lift doors. isn't that pretty fast drying? 

paul


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## paulingrad

sorry... I got liftdooritus


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## George Z

We are in the middle of painting elevator doors 48 doors.
We are using http://www.scuffmaster.com/index-envirometal.html
metallic paint, with HVLP.
We have 2-3 weekends to do it, 
it is a nice old 7 storey downtown building.

I will let you know how it went.


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