Can these salvaged doors be salvaged?
September 30, 2014 2:30 PM Subscribe
We trashpicked a couple of vintage wood doors - they looked like varnished wood, but it turns out they were painted and faux-finished to look like wood. Mr Jane has spent the better part of his weekends over the last month stripping them; he applied the stain last Sunday and there's still paint in the grain...
We are not novice wood refinishers, we've refinished most of the painted oak trim in our 100 year old house. The doors are pine. They had a base layer of white paint on the raw wood, then the decorative (and convincing!) faux finish on top of that. He's used citri-strip no less than 5 times, he's sanded them, he's used TSP and a brass brush and when he applied the stain, there's a lot of streaky light grainy patches, that are really unattractive - it looks like the door has been clawed by an animal (yet it's quite smooth, due to the sanding). Needless to say, Mr. Jane is quite annoyed at this outcome.
I'm pretty handy with a paintbrush - I offered to paint the offending areas, prior to the polyurethane coat.
My questions are:
1) If I were to attempt painting, should I use an oil base paint, since we've got oil based (Minwax) stain on the door?
2) How long do I let the oil paint dry before polyurethaning?
3) Should we even bother trying to fix them, or just cut our losses (time only, since they were trashpicked), polyurethane them and just give them a coat of paint?
We are not novice wood refinishers, we've refinished most of the painted oak trim in our 100 year old house. The doors are pine. They had a base layer of white paint on the raw wood, then the decorative (and convincing!) faux finish on top of that. He's used citri-strip no less than 5 times, he's sanded them, he's used TSP and a brass brush and when he applied the stain, there's a lot of streaky light grainy patches, that are really unattractive - it looks like the door has been clawed by an animal (yet it's quite smooth, due to the sanding). Needless to say, Mr. Jane is quite annoyed at this outcome.
I'm pretty handy with a paintbrush - I offered to paint the offending areas, prior to the polyurethane coat.
My questions are:
1) If I were to attempt painting, should I use an oil base paint, since we've got oil based (Minwax) stain on the door?
2) How long do I let the oil paint dry before polyurethaning?
3) Should we even bother trying to fix them, or just cut our losses (time only, since they were trashpicked), polyurethane them and just give them a coat of paint?
It may be worthwhile to have them steam-cleaned. When you do that, what you get back is wood, and nothing but wood. You have to start completely from scratch on finishing them.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 3:34 PM on September 30, 2014
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 3:34 PM on September 30, 2014
Response by poster: To clarify, I'm thinking of painting over the offending lighter areas, essentially faux-painting darker grainlines to mimic "nice" wood, not painting the whole door one solid color, unless we just give up as in option 3.
posted by sarajane at 3:41 PM on September 30, 2014
posted by sarajane at 3:41 PM on September 30, 2014
Best answer: Option 3. The wood itself (pine) isn't usually a very high quality/beautiful wood, and I don't think you'll ever be able to get it to look good with any combination of stain/cleaning. I'd bet money that those light streaky grainy problem areas are the wood itself, and you can't buff it out. There's a reason the doors were primed and then painted with a faux finish. If you're super commited to the look of finished wood, primer and then a new faux finish is your best bet. You're better off just doing a primer/PU coat on top, IMO.
You might have some luck using a dark stain first to try and get the wood all the same lightness/darkness, but I'd only recommend it if you really liked the look of the natural wood.
Go option 3, cut your losses, chalk it up as a learning experience.
posted by DGStieber at 4:58 PM on September 30, 2014 [2 favorites]
You might have some luck using a dark stain first to try and get the wood all the same lightness/darkness, but I'd only recommend it if you really liked the look of the natural wood.
Go option 3, cut your losses, chalk it up as a learning experience.
posted by DGStieber at 4:58 PM on September 30, 2014 [2 favorites]
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2) Check with the paint manufacturer via their 800 number and ask what the recoat window is. Best adhesion is actually going to be if you apply poly before the paint is hard dry.
3) Hard to say without seeing them but based on your description of the stain result, I would go with paint plus poly (in that order) if you want a nice glossy finish.
posted by beagle at 3:30 PM on September 30, 2014