Front door refinishing questions
 

My front door is 42" x 80", solid wood and is a quality piece but after 50 years, the finish is starting to peel away in spots and it's getting cloudy.
A badly adjusted sprinkler was hitting it last year for a while and that didn't help.
Not sure of the finish but it's really thick like a urethane. At least 1/64" thick.
New doors that size and quality run in the thousands, so I wanna save it but have no clue how to strip off the old finish without screwing up the door.
Heck I'd even pay to have that done if I knew a pro.

Any thoughts?

We did the one on our old house. We stripped it down with a sander. Both a belt sander and a hand size vibrating sander. Then hit is with new stain, and Marine Spar Varnish. That was 25 years ago and in Oklahoma. You will likely have to smuggle in a good grade of Spar Varnish into California.

I was thinking of sanding it down, but the door has 5 recessed panels and a stained glass insert, and I don't think I can sand down in those details.
Or if I did it'd take a month of Sundays.
And if I used a chemical stripper I don't know if i'd ever get it out of the wood.

Kinda like this sort of thing only more so:
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1595280143.jpg

profile sander?

Don't know what that is, gotta go find out.
Why are you always giving me homework? ;)

If you find a compatible top coat there's no need to remove the existing basecoat everywhere.

Water sand locally, scuff everything, and put two new coats on top.

just trying to keep you off the streets and out of trouble

it's a kinda/sorta random orbit that has a bunch of different ... um profiles for the sand paper part

also...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyczcU6qdVE


the real question is which stain will last a long time - I have the same issue on a S facing door that also gets rain in winter

Zeke would know, right?

Yes, I've done quite a few w/o stripping. The upper parts of entry doors never seem to get the sun and other deteriorating factors like the bottom 4th or so. It all depends on the condition when starting. If the bottom is completely open to bare wood, some graying and maybe mold discoloration must be addressed. Oxalic acid usually cleans this up quickly.

If I was doing a job 20 miles away, I needed to hurry up and do it all in one day. Sam doesn't need to take that route — he has time to let the acid wash completely dry out before proceeding.

Next step is to sand and blend the surface and see what needs to be done if the color of the lower part of the door doesn't look like the good part. I use a fast dry sealer over any bare wood and then use toners to blend colors to match. If it's a yellowed varnish look then some amber shellac will bring it around and make it look a bit aged. After that it's a couple coats of high quality acrylic polyurethane first on the repair and then the whole door.

That's the short version. Took me 20 years to perfect the process. Lots of cleaning and preparation of old surfaces involved which can be done while waiting for things to dry down below.

Nothing beats taking the door down and doing this off site and many do. The thing is, they get as much for that as a mid line new prefinished door costs.

Steel wool is the best 'profile sander'.

You also need a box full of various scrapers and picks.

Oh, and I've been known to use an airbrush while toning.

I've never had success in getting new wood stain/finish to blend with an existing finish.
The color and tone have been perfect, but then a day later it soaks in. Everything changes.

The only solution is to strip everything on top and sand to wood imo.
Or paint.

I have never done a door, but have done several persimmon headed golf clubs. Remove finish, raise the grain, sand, raise it again, steel wool and stain. Finish with polyurethane.

I'll put up some pics later this week of what we're up against.
I'm tempted to make a temporary door (painted brown) and take this door down and make a project out of it. I know if I rush it or try to do it in place I won't be happy with the result.

Getting the old finish will be the toughest part, I'll take Zeke's input and see if I can spot repair and blend.
Past experience has taught me that I'm not that good at stuff like this but maybe this time will be different ;)

For a long time I could just wipe old English furniture polish on it (dark brown) and it'd look good for several months, but now the varnish has started peeling and there's no covering that up.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1595344749.jpg

At our old house we had a door that faced the East. It received full sun from dawn until noon. We put on a glass storm door and that helped keep the weather off of it, but the sun is the real killer. The door still looked great when we sold the place. Now our front door is on the north, and there has been a glass storm door in place since day one.

I have a similar problem with my front door, which is suffering from west facing sun exposure in late afternoons. Like Milt says, the bottom less than a quarter is bad with the rest in good shape. Some of the panels started separating before I got to it, & I tried to fill one of them with wood filler followed by steel wool, wiping with stain, & spar urethane. It was supposed take a stain but didn't & now I'm unsure how to go about fixing it.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1595351750.jpg

That's a shame that it's gotten that bad, but it makes mine seem no so daunting. Still looks fixable in the right hands but I don't know who that would be.
My door doesn't see direct sunlight ever, just the occasional sprinkler.

I can't believe the prices I'm seeing for new doors, the cheep ugly ones I wouldn't want on my house are around $1300 and they go up really quick from there.

Marv, that can be fixed. I'm busy today but I'll bet back to you.

john70t, you're problem might be because you skipped my sealing of the wood before any staining or toning.

If any of you are familiar with faux graining that's the direction these repairs take. Restore the background color and add highlights. No 2 jobs alike.

Ah, yes. This part.

I'm definitely interested in trying anything to fix the problem. It's a double door, & the other side has a bit of the same problem but not as bad as the left side. I requested a covering of spar urethane when they were built, but I suspect that never happened.

I fill cracks like that with 10 minute epoxy, which you can add universal tint to. it sands flush, but it isn't UV resistant, so you need to put the finish on it soon after you prep.

What about soda blasting the old finish from the door? Get it down to bare wood and go from there.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/FioQ7_fbNvg" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Here;s some pics:
the outside of the door, nice from 20 feet. It's 42" wide, don't know why it looks so narrow in the pic.


http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1595426304.jpg




Lower-left section, this is the worst of the damage. You can see how thick the varnish is.
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1595426304.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1595426583.jpg





Lower right area, in this pic you can see a little of the white discoloration. Before I hit it with the old english scratch cover, about 1/4 of the lower section had that white stuff on it. Don't know if it's discolored varnish or just hard water deposits?
it takes a few months to reappear.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1595426304.jpg

At 1:50 you can see the damage she did to the wood. Unless Sam is going for the 'rustic' look, that's a terrible idea. Might as well use a 4000 psi pressure washer.

That kinda reminds me of wood shop in 9th grade.
If we didn't want to hassle with getting the sanding and finishing just right we'd hit the wood with a propane torch to char the surface, then go over it with a wire brush to remove most of the char, and then finish. Easy peazy, if you're looking for something to go with your lava lamp.

Not as popular now as it was then .... ;)

But if the idea was to just get the finish off and THEN sand it back down to smooth that soda blast would work, but I'm not sure how sanding it would save.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1595435133.jpg


http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1595435133.jpg

It's hard to tell from the photo but do you have some veneer on the bottom left side of the door (bottom of the left style) that's damaged?

sammy, the trick is gonna be to not damage the inset glass

I got the same problem..

I'm thinking this is going to be a project that can only be solved with lots and lots of time and lots of elbow grease, and time.
And some learning thrown in.
No quick fix, no finish it in a day stuff.
Gotta get psyched up for it.

On the plus side, it's an excuse to buy more tools.

Why pay some monkey to screw up the job, when you can do it yourself for free?

If I had someone that I trusted to do it right I'd have the checkbook out already.
Plan B is to screw it up myself. What's the worst that could happen? don't answer that

you can hire a good painter here for $99/hr


!!

lime green maybe ..... the wife would kill me.

^The major mistake there is bending-over and working on the floor...instead of on stands...at belly-button height.

Don't try to blast clean irregular materials.
(unless it's on purpose..)
Trees grow in concentric rings. Cambrium and something else I ferget. Some material hard. Some soft.
Doing this almost guarantees sanding down another 1/4" of door on both sides.

Whatever you do it won't be perfect but it will look wonderful at 10 feet. What else could you ask for?

That door is in great shape compared to most I tackled. When we were in the 90's recession I did a lot of this type of work because it was there. It wasn't fun but it was a quick $250 for a day's work.

The secret is to get a nice full coat of SMOOTH finish over the whole door so that it reflected some light which some people call a shine. Not a gloss. They don't see beyond that, trust me.

I think I'd take a hard look at painting the door, if the style of the house would work with a painted door. Less repair time and a longer life.

I recently refinished the front door of my old house and that took the best part of a week. Mine was considerably larger but also perfectly flat, so it could be easily sanded mechanically. Along the way I learned that there really aren't any transparent stains that are intended for exterior use. Some solids in the stain are required for it to stand up to the UV.

Stained wood looks good but it's a lousy solution for exterior use in a sunny climate.

This is actually very true. The predominate theme for natural wood doors and windows is to have the exterior painted with the interior stained and finished with clear. I live in a 90 YO home with some of the original windows in the front living and dining rooms and this is how they were done in 1930.

I have a mahogany screen door at the front entry and it lasts 2 years at best before needing stripping and finishing. It does face the morning sun.

OK assuming I'm dumb enough to pull this off, would you recommend satin or semi-gloss spar urethane?

I've got my dad's old belt sander with a bunch of new, 80 grit belts that would take that present finish off in no time flat.

I'd go with semi-gloss.

Is urethane better (longer lasting) than something like Cetol?

I've got a belt sander and orbital sanders (air and electric) but that won't help much getting into the nooks/crannies.
Gonna need more power

Maybe one of them funny little sanders with the triangle thing.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1595533312.jpg

Yeah, I know about nooks and crannies.
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1595533665.JPG