We have been working on refinishing our front doors for almost a year. They were in awful shape when we bought the house having suffering from many years of neglect and New England weather. It’s our guess that nothing has been done to them since the day they were installed on the newly built house in 1982.
When we started this project we were blessed with the blissful absence of experience or knowledge of the process. So we thought to ourselves, “Gee, this can’t be that hard, we’ll do it ourselves!”. I remember that day… a day that will live in infamy.
[photopress:fd_during1_1_2.JPG,thumb,alignleft] In late September of last year we began sanding the old finish off one of the doors (it is a double door) using various power tools. A borrowed belt sander, hand-held ‘mouse’ sander, a drill with sanding disk attachment, right down to a Dremel. After three weekends of sanding we knew we had made a wrong choice in not having the doors profesionally stripped but we were commited now. The flat areas were easy, the real pain was the trim. What we settled on was using the mouse sander with 80grit on the large areas and a Dremel tool with a either a small sanding drum or, a pointed grinding attachment for the trim areas.
[photopress:fd_during2.jpg,thumb,alignright] In this photo you can see the original finish, the current state of the exposed finish, and the areas we have sanded. Our target is to match the original.
The weather closed in on us last year and we had to move the door indoors to do the stain and apply the poly coats, 3 in all. That took another 2 weekends (8 hours between poly coats). We went through the winter and spring of this year with one old and one new door. It was quite a look. 😉
When we got around to it this year, it was mid June but we had the experience of the first door behind us and a bit of head start as Lori had done much of the trim areas already. It took only two solid days of sanding this time to get the bulk of the old finish off. But did I finish the job then and there? Oh no… summer kicked in and it stayed that way for about 6 weeks before I got back to it. In the mean time rain, bugs, oxidation, etc, got to the wood and I had to re-sand it all to get back to a good surface. Silly Tim.
[photopress:ars_screen_closed.jpg,thumb,alignright]The good news was that earlier in the spring we had a set of Mirage Retractable Screens installed. The couple that owns the local dealership worked long after sunset to get these great looking screens installed (Thanks Regina & Ken!). This let us remove the door and work on it inside without the worry of bugs, etc.. These things ROCK! They look great, nearly invisible when not in use. They rollup into a frame installed around the door and include a pin latch in the middle to allow you to lock one side into a fixed position while openning the other half. We had the door off for about 3 days and nights while applying the final finish poly coats. I gotta tell ya, it was a bit wierd going to bed with the front door, well, missing, but it worked out fine.
[photopress:FrontDoor_After.jpg,thumb,alignleft] Well, here is the finished product, in all it’s glory. We are very pleased with the way it turned out. Was it worth the millions of brain cells I killed off with poly fumes, or the 6 lbs of sawdust we inhaled? Well, let’s just say that next time it’s going out to be stripped. 😉