exterior door refurbishment advice

[mclarenf1racer]

Hello there,

looking for a bit of advice on refurbishing an exterior door with lots and lots of paint on it.
its an old door from a sandstone victorian type building.
my plan is to replace the panel mouldings as some are rotting, any ideas on where I can get my hands on a hardwood 2.5inch moulding.
I am also looking to strip the door with heatgun and nitromors, or nitromors and heatgun, open to suggestions to get rid of the thousand of layers of paint.
going to sand the door to a smooth finish and then stain and varnish the door, hopefully.
is it ok to use filler on the door, it does say that it is suitable for both interior and exterior.
lots of advice would be appreciated thanks

 

[Dibs-h]

If it's been painted all these years - it might not be hardwood & I wouldn't want stain and varnish a softwood door.

Old paint - might contain lead, so better off with nitromors I think.

Dibs

 

[Oryxdesign]

It's worth considering getting it dipped, much easier than nitro IRS and will remove more paint in the difficult to get corners

 

[AndyT]

Ok here are my thoughts -

Dipping - no - you won't want to be without a front door for a week, nor will you want dissolved glue in the joints.
Heat gun - good but tedious. More practical for little bits rather than the whole door.

Do bear in mind that if there are lots of layers of old paint, some of them might be lead paint, so you don't want to be breathing in fumes or dust from stripping it.

I think the best option is one of the new breed of strippers - there are some around now which really do take lots of layers off without even being caustic or smelly. I used one called Home Strip - details here.

If you need to replace some of the mouldings, you have a bit more of a challenge - they will almost certainly need to be specially made to match - which is not impossible but depends on your woodworking skills. Pictures would help.

And I agree with Dibs that softwood doors look better painted, especially if when you do get the paint off you find old scorch marks from previous stripping with a blowlamp.

 

[Jacob]

Dipping means door death. It'll only last a few more years if you do that.
Stripping is probably pointless as the wood underneath is likely to be heavily stained and watermarked, probably fllled and repaired, old screw holes, iron stains, generally a mess in part
Best is to clean up well with sugar soap, then sand lightly to remove worst of paint defects, then paint. It's an old door, no point in attempting to make it look new, impossible anyway.
Replace lost/damaged mouldings with copied replicas. If you can't do this then perhaps just leave them alone until you (or someone else) can.
I'd highly recommend linseed oil paints such as Holkham which is fairly expensive but much cheaper in the end as it covers really well and sticks like S to a blanket, specially on old messy surfaces. You use linseed oil as primer over the old paint and bare surfaces. Works really well, I've been doing my own trial on this after having modern paints peeling off old woodwork.
Restoring old joinery is similar to any other antique restoration - the basic rule is to do as little as necessary. Any more is likely to spoil it and could be irreversible.

 

[mclarenf1racer]

well turns out the door is softwood, all of the mouldings were done so I was looking to replace them with an off the shelf, sorry, I had looked at various websites found an architrave in jewson, tried to contact my local centre but the phone just rang and rang, drove to the local jewson and they didnt know anything of this product, I showed them it on their website and the guy went on the computer, nothing in scotland and couldnt order it in, but, he says he knew a company that could do it possibly, asks his buddy what the company's name was again and I caught it, turns out its a local company that I had heard of, anyways he came back with a price of of say £52, delivery to their branch on posssibly tuesday.
I went home, phoned the company myself and the gave me a price that was £20 less than what jewsons were quoting, and they had the items available to pick up next day. what a rip off.
anyways thanks for the info, appreciated, now getting stuck in to it

 

[Jacob]

well turns out the door is softwood, ....

No surprise there. Almost all the best joinery in Britain in all the classic big houses and down to tiny terrace cottages, is softwood.

 

[AndyT]

I hope you have been able to get the right mouldings - without pictures my guesses could be wide of the mark. But just in case, it might help to know that in Victorian work the commonest approach for exterior doors was to let the panels into grooves and add a planted 'bolection moulding' which protrudes beyond the face of the door. This picture shows the sort of thing:

and this shows it with a panel

You might have an easier one like this:

in which case a stock architrave moulding could be fine.

(Pictures from Longden Doors in Sheffield - which were the first suitable ones in Google image search.)

 

[mclarenf1racer]

andy thanks for that upload, I have to say that it is a moulding like bl2. which I have had to cut the rebate into.
I have been happy with the stripping of the door and how it looks, my question now is I am attaching these moulding to the door, how do I seal it so that the water doesnt run down the back of the mouldings, i.e when the mouldings get stuck onto the door there will be the chance of water running down the panel of the door and into the back of the moulding, do i seal it with filler?

 

[AndyT]

Hard to say without seeing it, but assuming the old wood is not beautifully smooth everywhere my approach for a diy job would be to use some fairly forgiving glue to put the mouldings on - something like 'No more nails' or equivalent - which would be good at gap filling and waterproof itself. I'd probably go round afterwards with the same stuff or with a flexible exterior filler which could be painted over.
Maybe one of the professionals will know a better way!

 

[Jacob]

Bolection mouldings are always nailed on, nailed through into rails/stiles NOT the panel. Usually undercut slightly so that they spring on to the face of the panel, leaving it free to move without a gap opening. Then well painted.

 

[mclarenf1racer]

thanks jacob for your response and to everyone else, I now have photos listed in the projects section.
victorian-door-renovation-t53912.html

 

[woodking]

Hi,

I know this may sound like a silly question but has anyone ever heard about or used porridge as a paint stripper? If so, does it work?

 

[AndyT]

Hi,

I know this may sound like a silly question but has anyone ever heard about or used porridge as a paint stripper? If so, does it work?

Yep, sounds silly to me!

Ok, if you had really non-permanent water soluble paint, such as old distemper on a plaster moulding, porridge might work as a way of keeping details wet long enough for the paint to soften, but on any proper paint I can't see it having any effect at all.

 

[woodking]

Thanks Andy,

I've actually read a couple of articles about porridge working as a paint stripper and it seems that some believe that it works. Seems like a lot of mess and effort and i don't know how comparable it is in cost terms not to mention the smell, if left on for a day or so. i actually found these images of someone who tried it on a fireplace (right hand upright). It clearly wasn't as effective as the other stuff they were using.

Sorry, posted the images back to front, bottom image is the first and the top is the last.

I've got a similar project to do but obviously have no idea what the differences are in terms of paint age, type and layers as compared to those in the images below.

Would peelaway be a good choice or are there better alternatives?

 

[AndyT]

If I were you, I'd use the stuff I linked to in the old post above - http://www.ecosolutions.co.uk/homestrip.html - which I found to be as pleasant to use as the website says, and very effective. It will depend on what sort of paint(s) you have on your job though.

 

[woodking]

It's difficult to know exactly what sort of job i'm dealing with, i've scratched the surface and the paint appears to be a good millimeter or so thick. I'm guessing that the latter top coats are probably modern paints from the last 20 years or so and that the deeper older paints could be lead based ;-(

Think i'll deffinitely give the porridge a miss.

Thanks for your help anyway