Door Restoration

[MdB]

I have a couple of old doors which I want to reuse in our hodgepodge of a house but both are in need of some TLC before I fit them.

The right hand one was in the house when we bought it so is possibly original to the house (yes, I did put my hand through one of the panes - fortunately it was modern float glass rather than a wiggle one). Apart from replacing the broken glass, nothing much needs to be done to the door apart from sorting out the paint work. It has been repainted many times and in places this paint has started to peel from the base layer as sort of can be seen below. In other places it is chipped.

My choices are to either lightly sand it (trying to avoid the lead layers) and put yet another layer of paint on or to strip it (or get it stripped) with the intention of repainting afterwards. What do people think? Is stripping a good way forward? - what are your recommendations?

The left hand door has been mucked about a lot in the past. It is highly likely that the top two panels have been removed and replaced with glass (badly) and that the moulding on the bottom two panels is probably modern. It looks like it might have been stripped in the past as well as there appears to only be a single layer of peeling paint. My thought here was to remove all the beading and glass then to put new glass in properly together with some more sensible moulding. I know glass probably isn't ideal for the door but we need some light to come through it and as our house is such a mix of ages, we think it will fit. Again, I need to consider whether to strip or just sand and repaint.

 

[MatthewC]

The right hand door looks very nice, but I think the other is a fairly ordinary door, of which we have several very similar examples. Ours are done with shellac and two have had glass in the upper panels - one was the bathroom (!) and had then been covered with hardboard. They are all fairly thin - some are just one inch and the thickest is 1.25". The other panels are inset with a thin board which is probably only one-eighth of an inch, and they have a square edge with no moulding. I would guess that yours might have had the moulding added where there had been a square edge before.

As far as I can tell (from looking at a couple of local reclamation yards) they are not especially old (1940s?) and seem to have been the equivalent (then) of those horrible white panel doors that you can get for £20 or so if inclined that way.

I'd just remove the beading, sand and paint, unless you have nothing better to do! If you can wait until next summer I can let you have the whole set to match yours as we want to replace them but that's pretty far down the priority list.

Matthew
http://houseintheenchantedforest.blogspot.com/

 

[Nigel Watts]

I think the right hand door could have been cut down as the bottom rail looks a bit narrow, as does the top rail (the latter should normally be the same width as the uprights). I think that door could be 19th C and could have been an internal door in a hall, for example dividing the main hall leading to the reception rooms from the back hall to the kitchen or possibly a door leading from a hall to the garden. The other door could be Victorian or Edwardian.

 

[JoceAndChris]

Oh God, it brings back memories of my 12 hallway doors.

Sanding is adequate in my opinion. Stripping is laborious, messy, and can easily damage the wood.

If there are large "holes" in the paint that sanding does not remedy a very fine filler can be applied. I'd recommend something like a light Polyfiller - Onefill - as being very easy to wood with, easier than wood filler. That's probably sacrilege but it worked for me. :wink:

An old door will never look like a new one - and that's its charm.

 

[MdB]

As far as I can tell (from looking at a couple of local reclamation yards) they are not especially old (1940s?) and seem to have been the equivalent (then) of those horrible white panel doors that you can get for £20 or so if inclined that way.

That doesn't surprise me. It is however, the best we could come up with for where we wanted to put it. Nothing new looked right and we couldn't find anything old from reclaim that we like / could afford.

I'd just remove the beading, sand and paint, unless you have nothing better to do! If you can wait until next summer I can let you have the whole set to match yours as we want to replace them but that's pretty far down the priority list.
/

I have another 5 doors (I think) of the same design (square edge) with 4 wood panels rather than glass. They are also available if anybody wants them...

I think the right hand door could have been cut down as the bottom rail looks a bit narrow, as does the top rail (the latter should normally be the same width as the uprights). I think that door could be 19th C and could have been an internal door in a hall, for example dividing the main hall leading to the reception rooms from the back hall to the kitchen or possibly a door leading from a hall to the garden. The other door could be Victorian or Edwardian.

The house was originally 19th C though little remains so that would fit. It also looks cut down to me but that adds to the charm (and the sore heads when tall people go through the door frame...)

Sanding is adequate in my opinion. Stripping is laborious, messy, and can easily damage the wood.

Sanding it is then.

Thanks for your comments Matthew, Nigel, Joce.

 

[AMc]

On the flip side I stripped ours because we wanted them bare (sorry).
I used a hot air gun outside in summer - wearing a mask but I'm aware the lead risk was probably something I should have taken more precautions against.
I'm not sure what is safer - sanding perhaps gives more danger of lead dust which can be breathed in, hot air stripping obviously warms the lead making it easy to breath in...
I found nitromors to be absolutely useless on many layers of old paint - turning it to sticky sludge that was still impossible to remove.

Obviously you have an added danger when using heat near the glass.

The builders stripped a door in about half the time I did using a wide chisel dragged down over the paint.to cause it to flake and chip. That's the plan for the remaining door which is bare on one side and flaking on the other.

 

[Moo]

I stripped all our sash windows using one of the poultice systems (I think it was called Peelaway).
I was lucky because it was the summer and our little backyard was a perfect place to do the work which, I agree, would have been unpleasantly messy if I'd had to do it indoors.
But I just wanted to get rid of the centuries of paint that were clogging up the delicate mouldings.

 

[robgil]

Are there not places that dip doors?

 

[JoceAndChris]

There are. They have been known to fall apart though.

I've used Nitromors with on many, many layers of paint too. It takes about ten applications though! The problem I had with it was how soft it turned the mouldings, so easy to gouge them when scraping off the gunk.

 

[Moo]

That's why I gave up on the Nitromors and chose the poultice system.

 

[MdB]

That's why I gave up on the Nitromors and chose the poultice system.

That's what initiated this post. Mrs MdB had a horrible day with Nitromors and didn't want to have to do the same thing with these doors. What poultice system did you use? I will probably just sand the doors but it would be nice to see more of the details that have been lost under lots of paint and to get rid of the runs.

 

[worms]

Of course there is always that heat lamp that is for sale somewhere!

 

[worms]

If there are large "holes" in the paint that sanding does not remedy a very fine filler can be applied. I'd recommend something like a light Polyfiller - Onefill - as being very easy to wood with, easier than wood filler.

A stopper paste of linseed putty thinned with more linseed oil also seems to work pretty well.

 

[dandrew]

I think the right hand door could have been cut down as the bottom rail looks a bit narrow, as does the top rail (the latter should normally be the same width as the uprights). I think that door could be 19th C and could have been an internal door in a hall, for example dividing the main hall leading to the reception rooms from the back hall to the kitchen or possibly a door leading from a hall to the garden. The other door could be Victorian or Edwardian.

The right hand door is a diminished stile door that was made so that the stiles above the lock rail were narrower than those below, in order to let in more light in through the glazing. The top rail is usually as wide as the diminished stiles, so if this one has been cut down only the bottom rail has been reduced. As for restoration, if you want to strip it go for a solvent based system (Nitromors) as hot caustic soda baths destroy the old glue (it's probably long passed any degree of usefulness on the basis of age anyway). You will probably reveal all kinds of knots, patches and filler that will stand out much more noticeably than before because they were clogged with layers of old paint. If it were me I'd just touch it up where needed and not worry about small imperfections.

Dave

 

[Flyfisher]

It is just me that thinks layers and layers of old paint add something to the look and feel of old wood?

I don't mean paint that's peeling or flaking or in otherwise poor condition, but layers of basically sound paint with just the odd chip and blemish. Although we've yet to start decorating in earnest, we have plenty of such paintwork and I'm really not sure how best to treat it because, in my limited experience, when such paintwork is stripped back (by whatever methods) and then repainted, it somehow doesn't look 'quite right'.

I don't really know why. Perhaps it's the incongruity of something known to be old but looking fresh and crisply painted (if that makes any sense?), whereas the many layers of old paint adds it's own subtle changes to the detailing of edges and corners, rounding them off perhaps - it's not easy to explain.

 

[Nigel Watts]

The top rail is usually as wide as the diminished stiles, so if this one has been cut down only the bottom rail has been reduced.

To me the top looks narrower than those diminished styles, which made me think the top had also been cut. "Diminshed style door" - useful additional to my lexicon. Thanks!

 

[AMc]

It is just me that thinks layers and layers of old paint add something to the look and feel of old wood?

I know what you mean. I asked one of the builders who was waiting for something to be delivered to quickly rub down the back door and put on a coat of paint for exactly that reason. I was slightly less than pleased when I came back an hour later to find he'd taken the door off and had 1/4 of the door to bare wood - thus needing 3 coats instead of 1 on a basically sound surface and of course leaving us with no way to secure the kitchen that had been delivered in the mean time which he was meant to be fitting.

I had a lot of polite disagreements with builders who wanted to strip everything back and fix the very things that I thought showed the age and character of the building.

 

[robgil]

Why do they fall apart when you dip them? Does it dissolve the glue as well?

 

[Moo]

the many layers of old paint adds it's own subtle changes to the detailing of edges and corners, rounding them off perhaps - it's not easy to explain.

You've explained it perfectly, and I agree with almost every word, but there does come a time when the layers of paint completely obliterate the moulding (as they do on plaster cornices) and there's really no alternative to getting back to the bare wood.

 

[Penners]

Why do they fall apart when you dip them? Does it dissolve the glue as well?

Yes. Dipping can also dry the oils out of the wood, making it brittle and liable to some cracking.