Lucite Elite Exterior Semi Gloss Paint Review

Overall 3.00 of 5 (by 1 user)

BayouBengal
Liberty, MS

Lucite Exterior Semi Gloss Paint--One Coat You Say? I Say Not!

Homeowner, willing to pay for quality, a woman, Ms. Fix-it, doing odd jobs around the house

Pros

Washes off with soap and water

Cons

I needed two coats

NOV

2008

Lucite Elite Exterior Semi Gloss Paint —

When it comes to odd jobs that need doing around our new house, there are too many to list. We joke all the time about never being bored here because there is too much to do! We haven't even thought of starting the remodeling of our old house yet, which we need to get on the market soon. I think I'll be doing odd jobs on most of my weekends for the next few months.

One of the projects I tackled at the beginning of the month was painting a screen door that led to our front porch. When we moved in there were no screen or storm doors on either the front or back doors. We decided to put up screen doors for the time being. This way we could take advantage of opening the doors and getting a breeze on mild days.

We purchased unfinished screen doors since we had a closet of paint that was left in the house. The paint I used for the screen doors was Lucite Elite Exterior Semi Gloss Paint in a basic white color. Lucite Elite Exterior Paint is a 100% acrylic latex paint that also provides UV protection against any sun damage. Lucite advertises this paint as only requiring one coat of paint. It is also advertised as resisting cracking and peeling. It carries a "Super Premium 20 year Durability" seal on the can of paint.

Other specifications on the Lucite Elite Exterior Paint are:

- Mildew Resistant
- Fast drying
- Non-caulking
- Can be applied at temperatures as low as 35 degrees
- Cleans up with soap and water

My Experience With Painting the Doors

The Lucite Elite Exterior Paint was easy to mix by stirring for several minutes. There was a bit of separation which happens in most paint when it settles from sitting in one place. Once stirred, I got out a 1" paint brush and started putting on a coat of Lucite Elite Exterior Paint. I quickly discovered that I needed paper to go up under the wooden strips forming borders on the inside of the door frames. Once this problem was solved, the painting was much easier and went pretty quickly.

When I was about half way through painting one side of the door which I had on the back of my husband's flatbed truck, I took a look at the part of the door I had already painted. It was starting to dry and I did not like the fact that this "one coat" of paint didn't give the appearance of covering the wood very well. There were shallow places in some spots and not in others. I decided that the screen doors would require another coat of paint.

I ended up spending an entire afternoon painting one side of the screen door. I waited about an hour after applying one coat of paint and then applied a second coat of paint. By this time the paint was dry where I had first started painting. The second coat of Lucite Elite Exterior Paint did the job. I painted the opposite side of the door the following afternoon. This job took a little more time than I expected. Keeping paint off the screen was not an easy job because you could not get under the screen and get paper in between the wood and screen in all places.

I never painted the second door because Mr. Fix-It then discovered that the two doors were two different sizes and he needed to exchange one of the doors.

Recommendation

I was really glad that I was only painting a door without 100% wood surface area when I found that the Lucite Elite Exterior Paint was going to take a second coat of paint. This could have been due to the kind of wood the doors were made--I'm not sure. I do know that I wouldn't be happy if I was painting the exterior of my house and was relying on the advertising of a "one coat formula" to be 100% true. Buy Lucite Elite Exterior Paint at your own risk, especially for large projects.