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I removed some door hinges and plan to get the paint off. Once the paint is off I’m going to put them back up. The paint on hinges, wall and door have lead paint.

My question is did they paint over all the hinges and door knobs in the house because of lead paint?

If so is there something I should do to encapsulate or protect any friction or what not from the hinges attached to the wall and door?

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    Remove all the hinges and strip off the lead paint. Be certain wear a mask and gloves. 😷🧤Once all the hardware is off of the doorframe, clean it with TSP and warm water. Paint over it with two coats of latex. Make certain when you re-install the hinges that no parts of the door are sagging, rubbing or otherwise binding.
    – M.Mat
    Commented Nov 10, 2019 at 5:47
  • throw out old hinges. buy new ones from build.com @ $2/piece.
    – ron
    Commented Nov 11, 2019 at 19:44
  • Finial top and bottoms are over $25 a piece, Ill pass
    – Mike Flynn
    Commented Nov 12, 2019 at 15:42

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They wouldn't have painted over because of the lead paint. They would have painted because they didn't like the color, or because the paint had gotten ratty. Very few people consider lead paint to be an emergency. It's lead, not plutonium.

The issue with lead paint was found because of a socially motivated race to find causes for several groups doing poorly on intelligence testing. Turns out children eat paint chips. Middle-classers live in well-kept, often newer homes which had no peeling paint. But the urban poor live in older, rental (so maintenance is not allowed) slums with peeling paint. Lead poisoning causes brain damage. In a house with well-maintained paint, it's not really much of a problem; however, it's politically unpalatable to say why that's so.

So, make sure the paint is stable and not likely to peel. Then just go ahead and overcoat it.

You can strip it if you want to, but paint old enough to be leaden is also old enough to be alkyd. This can be a little challenging to strip; the overcoated latex will come right off but the underlying alkyd will fight you. Heat can help, but keep it under 1100F. If you sand, wet-sand, and send the wash and solid chips to wherever your town tells you to.

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  • I agree with lead paint not being that big of a deal, just keep the kids from chewing on it and their is no risk at all. @harper - reinstate Monica , what’s up with the name change did I miss something? P.s. navel jelly also works to remove paint from metal.
    – Ed Beal
    Commented Nov 12, 2019 at 20:02
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If you want to remove all the paint regardless if it is alkyd or not, find an old camp stove pot and put the hinges in it, cover it with water and put a cup of bicarbonate soda (baking soda) in it. Then put this on low heat for a couple hours. After that let it cool enough you work with everything. All the old paint will come loose and you'll be able to easily scrape or brush any of it off. I did this to all the door knobs, hinges, screws, etc. for a house built in the 40s and it had 4 or 5 coats of paint on the hardware. Works really well, it just takes awhile.

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  • Sounds like a good plan sound advice to use a pan that could be sacrificed, I use an old cast iron pot when I melt lead and would never cook with that pan ever again.
    – Ed Beal
    Commented Nov 12, 2019 at 20:19

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