Still struggling with doors

[JoceAndChris]

Hallway doors are driving me nuts.

The handles and escutcheons and lock mechanisms are glopped with paint, stripping them back with Nitromors reveals nice original Georgian brass but the Nitromors bites into the layers of paint surrounding the door furniture, which leads to an uneven surface in the final coat. Any ideas about how to remedy this? Ideally, I'd have taken the handles and escutcheons off, but the screws and pins are too old and perished for that- plus they need a lot of coats of Nitromors to get to them which causes the above problem. I've managed to take some of them off, with others the screw just goes round and round and never loosens.

And what would you do with the kind of crack you can see in this picture?

All the doors have these large cracks, you can see daylight throught them. My dad's taken one away, taken off the beading (which crumbled to bits), he's now making new beading (having made a tool to make the beading :roll: ) to cover the crack. It's terribly sweet, but I can't face this kind of meddling on all 14.

I put wood filler in one yesterday, it's kind of messy though. Any thoughts?

 

[Anita]

Oh you have my umost sympathy!

My O/H took hours and hours to lovingly strip back/ fill/ prime/ coat with several layers of paint - all of our hall and landing doors that were all either cracked or not quite the right fit. They looked lovely. Then we had central heating installed and they have shrunk and cracked again..grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr......

 

[JoceAndChris]

Oh, God, I'm sorry. Is the moral of this just put up with the cracks?

 

[Janey]

I guess if you dont want to re-build 14 doors then one could argue that each crack has its own history. Wood is of course always going to move, which it is beauty. I suppose it depends on the size of the cracks, and what you can see through them! (Or who is going to be looking!)

(And I am assuming that the doors and frames all fit to shut which is a little more critical!)

Ignore me - my other half would argue to strip back and restore to the n-th degree - however he would also take the next decade to get round to it, hence we learn to compromise! If your Dad has the skills, will he perhaps take on the more objectionable specimens?)

 

[JoceAndChris]

Thanks Janey! It's a helpful summary - how to balance that desire for perfection with a)the elderly fabric b) the fact you'd like them done this year, not in the next ten c) lack of cash to get someone to just to take them away and make them nice.

They all fit, and close- maybe I should be content with that?

I've not had much luck really. Spent ages stripping what I thought might be a brass fingerplate to find it was pine. Spent ages stripping what I thought were brass numbers to find they were very battered thin silver metal, that look better painted. Dad knocked a hole in one door looking for panels.

Oh well, sure they'll look OK eventually.

 

[Schoolmarm]

Oh no! (numbers, fingerplate and door)

 

[Moo]

Here comes a suggestion from someone who doesn't know much about owt, so please bear with me and wait until someone who really knows his/her stuff comes along.

As far as I know, most of these doors have three components: The framework, the panels, and the beadings.
I've been led to believe that the panels are not glued into the framework, but slot into grooves and can therefore move (expand and contract) freely. I seem to remember reading somewhere that the framework is actually built round the panels.
The beading should be fixed to the framework (not to the panels) so that when the panels move, as they will, they will not pull the beading and create those gaps.
But you say, Joce, that you can see daylight through them, so that rather knocks my little theory on the head, doesn't it?

Please will someone come along and put us all out of our misery?

 

[JoceAndChris]

Thanks for the sympathy!

Can I please add to my list of complaints* that I've just lost a large chunk of hair into the heat gun? And broken the heat gun?

Moo- I don't understand these doors either, they've been cobbled together in a non-standard manner. They're kind of fake panel doors, but the fakery's old. (so I like it)

*If anyone else has any trivial complaints of the day, happy to hear.

 

[Schoolmarm]

Your hair!!! You are very lucky it is only a chunk and not the whole lot melted to your head! Bl##dyhell!

 

[Pford75]

Some thoughts on the door furniture.

We had a similar problem with screws being butterfly'ed, painted over or simply having lost their thread. In the end, I drilled the screws with an 'easy out screw extractor' and removed them. It did take time, but I was then able to remove the furniture and strip the paint separately....it was also necessary to be able to remove the doors from their hinges (since most of the screws were in a bad state).

On the cracks, we've resorted to flexible wood filler, sanded down and then painted

 

[Moo]

Any idea, Peter, about the construction of Joce's doors?


And, PS for Joce: Sorry to nag, but I think you should postpone replacing the heat gun until you've got those smoke detectors installed.

 

[Juju]

Re. trivial complaint of the day - I've got a fractured wrist - I did it 6 weeks ago and in fact the cast is due to come off tomorrow but it's annoyed me more today for some reason than for the previous 6 weeks! I'd like to say it was an impressive DIY or sports related injury but I just slipped on the ice. However it did happen outside my favourite paint/ironmongery shop so perhaps I can categorise it as a period property-related incident? I was probably too busy eyeing up their display of F&B wallpapers rather than concentrating on the sheet of ice on the pavement..

 

[Penners]

Moo's analysis of the way that such doors are constructed is correct - for a fair proportion of doors. The trouble is that not all doors are constructed identically.

As Moo said, the panels should be unfixed within their grooves (except sometimes for a light pin of glue spot top and bottom, to keep them central) so that they can expand and contract within the frame. The trouble is that generations of paint get forced into the unglued joint and this then acts as glue. The crack that Joce's picture shows was undoubtedly the result of the panel being paint-glued to the moulding, and then shrinking, thereby pulling the moulding away from the frame.

Some doors will have grooves in the actual frame, into which the panels slide. As Moo observed, these doors have to be assembled with the panels in place. Probably more common is the practice of incorporating a rebate instead of a groove. The panels are then laid into the rebated voids and the mouldings are applied to the other side, to lock the panels in place (although they still remain free to move).

Joce - if your doors are made in this latter way, you may find that you can remove the beading and lift the panels out, although this will probably damage the beading beyond reclamation.

I suggest you completely strip the doors of paint - start with one as a test. This is the only way that you can actually get to see the condition of the entire door and decide whether it has enough good timber left to be worth saving. Assuming that there is, then you can look at replacing any cracked panels or deteriorated beading. A badly deteriorated frame will prove more difficult - depending on where the bad wood is - but it may be possible to repair it by setting in new pieces of wood, or dismantling it to create a new component. This latter idea will depend on the type and effectiveness of any glue.

If you need to fill any damage, I suggest the best filler to use is the "cross-linked" resin type - just like car body filler. Here's one brand:

This can be sanded off absolutely flush with the wood, and can be drilled, screwed into and painted effectively. The only place where I wouldn't use it is in the area where the screw hinges have to hold the weight of the door.

Ultimately, however, you have to make a judgement on each door. If it's too far gone to be rescuable, then you'll just have to bite the bullet and replace it.

 

[Penners]

And, PS for Joce: Sorry to nag, but I think you should postpone replacing the heat gun until you've got those smoke detectors installed.

Well said. And it might be an idea to carry one around with you!

 

[Pford75]

Any idea, Peter, about the construction of Joce's doors?

'fraid not....i'm no carpentry expert, but i'm sure that someone more knowledeable will be along shortly. I do know from experience that central heating is a major cause of the cracking. Our house had no central heating and once we installed it (although we hardly have it raging hot...18 degrees), there were a number of doors with similar cracks.

Filler and painting does seem to work though as some of ours have been done for 2 years now with no sign of re-cracking

 

[Pford75]

but i'm sure that someone more knowledeable will be along shortly

In fact...Penners posted whilst I was typing...so perhaps I qualify as psychic :?:

 

[Penners]

Did you mean to omit the "ot"?

 

[JoceAndChris]

Thank you so much for all your help on this. xxx

Juju- I'm so sorry to read about your wrist, how annoying. It must make life very awkward indeed. You should write to FnB, sue - free wallpaper for life at the very least! (Please get me some of the St Antoine in blue!)

Pford - that's great to read about the flexible wood filler. That's what I've resorted to as well. At the moment I give myself nul points for my wood-filling skills- too embarrassed to post pics - but I'm hoping that by number 14 I'll be amazing at it. Good to hear that yours is still holding up.

Penners- how jealous I am of your craftsmanly knowledge and skills with wood. As you know my dad is great with wood as well but since I bombarded my mum with endless chatter of wallpapers and fabrics she's suddenly demanding dad redecorate their whole house, so I've lost him!

You mentioned about stripping the doors down and, well, rebuilding them. He's done this with two, and much better they look for it. It's completely beyond my skill level unfortunately. The doors are all sound and good, there's no rotten timber or anything like that.

After saying I'll never muck around with Nitromors and the removal of historic paint again, I find I'm embroiled with the main doors and face endless cycles of the stuff. I just couldn't paint over what was there, no-one had ever sanded before repainting and so there were great holes in the surface of the paint- so shabby.

Anyway, here's some pics of The Print Room in progress.

That door is going to have curtains in the same mustard yellow or maybe very very VERY dark green silk with the reverse of the swags falling tantalisingly open to reveal this toile:

http://www.fabricsandpapers.com/ebuttonz/ebz_product_pages/letempledejupiterlinenfabric-50070mhc.htm

The wallpaper is yet to go up below the chair rail, we'll be doing that this weekend - this one:

http://www.farrow-ball.com/productdetails.aspx?pid=WFST1147&cid=WPE&language=en-GB

We're planning on keeping all of the door furniture and getting the old lock restored. Any guesses about old this door furniture is? It was under many many layers of paint. I thought the previous owner had made the bar, but looking carefully at it, I think it's older.

I found these lovely keys in the workshop, and having stripped numerous escutcheons, ran round hopefully trying them in the locks, with no luck. I'm not sure if they're interior door keys or cabinet keys - anyone know?

As for the prints, I'm pretty much decided on recreating The Grand Tour on the walls. Fun!

 

[Penners]

Hmmm - that's an interesting waney edge on the bottom of the right-hand front door! Combined with the worn dips in the step, it should keep you well ventilated.

I recommend buying a dachshund. Properly trained, they make great draught excluders.

 

[Pford75]

Love the fabric Joce...I'm sure it will look stunning when finished.

We have a similar issue with a worn step underneath a door, it adds character but also tremendous drafts.

The trick I find works with woodfiller is to have a small pot of water handy and to clean and wet the trowel or whatever tool you are using before loading the filler. It helps it slip from the trowel and makes it easier to get a smooth surface without dragging the filler from the gap you've just filled!