Refinishing my 81-year-old front door

Our front door was in bad shape after years of neglect. The finish was completely flaking off, revealing the bare wood underneath.

See what I mean? Bad, bad. It was liable to give you bloody knuckles if you tried to knock.

After some initial indecision about whether to stain or paint, I started scoping out doors in our neighborhood and neighboring neighborhoods and noticed that my door with its natural wood finish seems to be in the minority, so I thought that was worth preserving.

Our front door is probably our exterior’s biggest asset, and I didn’t want to be the one to “spoil” it with paint. (Not right now anyway. We’ll see how the new finish holds up.)

The first step was sanding off the old finish, using a coarse 60 grit sandpaper and an electric sander. After about five minutes, this is what it looked like. See the two right panels? The exposed finish was just flaking off like nothing.

The whole sanding process produced so much more dust than I expected, so it’s good I had a dust mask. I probably should have also been wearing goggles, but they kept falling off. And with the dust mask, and some ear plugs and the goggles, I was feeling a bit too claustrophobic.

At this point, I figured it was time to remove the hardware. I took off the shiny brass kick plate. I expected to find some spider nests or water damage. And I did find a little bit of each.

But I was also astonished to find the previous finish had been protected under the kick plate. Crazy!

How long this door was neglected is anyone’s guess, but the difference between the finish and what it had become was a lot more drastic than I could have imagined.

The finish was perfectly protected behind Mr. Eagle Doorknocker as well.

Once everything was sanded (first with 60 grit, then with 220), it was time to address the rotting trim around the window. The stuff on the bottom of the circle was flaky and falling off.

But the top of the circle wasn’t really damaged at all. (Yeah, that’s what the bottom was supposed to look like.)

I carefully pried all of the trim off using a screwdriver and a pliers to pull out the nails.

The top was pretty secure; I had to drill some random holes so I could get my screwdriver under the trim.

I was scared to death I would break the stained glass window, but I took it slow and everything came off without a problem.

Here’s the door completely sanded and with trim removed from around the window. I couldn’t really sand off any more of the graying wood right above where the kick plate was.

Cleaner than it’s been in years. Still a little splotchy, but hey, this is an 81-year-old door I am dealing with. It’s not going to be perfect.

Almost ready for stain, but first a little wood filler on some deep cracks and gouges.

Then I used a wood conditioner. This is supposed to prepare the wood to accept the stain better. I’m not sure if it made a difference, but I figured the old wood needed all the help it could get.

I chose a gel stain in a medium brown called Cherrywood. I was afraid it was going to end up looking too reddish, but it turned out to be very similar to the swatch on the label.

One coat of stain, and this is where my big oversight of the project was revealed. The wood filler I used was only sandable/paintable, not stainable. I used stuff I already had on hand, so I didn’t bother reading the label. And it came back to bite me. After the first coat of stain was dry, I re-sanded all those areas taking off all the wood filler.

The second coat of stain covered all of my sanded areas without trouble and made the color of the whole door a little richer.

After two coats of stain, it was time to seal the door with three coats of polyurethane. Our front door faces south and gets full sun all day, so I was glad to see this mention that it protects against sunlight.

Ideally, I should have taken the door off the hinges to work on it, but I can’t really do that by myself, and waiting for someone to help me take it off was fueling my procrastination. And we sort of needed to be able to shut and lock the door at night!

This process was drawn-out, between the multiple coats of stain and sealer and all the drying time (8-10 hours for each coat of stain and 4 hours for each coat of polyurethane). There’s no way we could have functioned without a front door for several days.

After the door itself was finished, it was time to replace the trim around the window. I ordered this flexible molding online. It’s not real wood; it’s made of some sort of rubbery resin that won’t crack or rot.

Honestly, this was the step I was dreading the most in the whole process. I knew I had to use construction adhesive to adhere it to the door, but I wasn’t sure how I was going to hold the molding up while the glue was drying. It wasn’t really a clamp situation. It took me the longest time to figure it out, which is why the rest of the door was completely finished before I even started on the molding.

My solution was to put a single nail at the top of the circle (the installation instructions advised against using too many nails). This allowed me to work my way around the circle, gluing the trim in small sections.

I used painter’s tape to hold the molding in place until the glue set up. This method ended up working a lot better than I expected.

A couple of coats of stain and poly and it was looking a lot like real wood.

After attaching the hardware, the lengthy refinishing process was officially complete. This has been hanging over my head for a very long time; I’m so glad it’s done!

And because I’m crazy about a side-by-side before and after…