DON'T LET THE ELEMENTS DETERIORATE YOUR DOOR
PRESERVE ITS NATURAL BEAUTY!
FRONT DOOR FINISHING PROVIDES:
DOOR REFINISHING, STAINING, UV COATING, PAINTING,
PROTECTIVE UV MAINTENANCE, & FURNITURE REFINISHING.

Creating Long-Lasting Finishes

A FEW WORDS FROM SATISFIED CLIENTELE

“Bob, My front doors are simply beautiful, I mean they are just magnificent! There's nobody like you, you are a fantastic artist!

D. Ranzun

“We couldn’t believe the results of Bob’s restoration of our original antique front door. He spent the time to really prepare all the detailed reeding and florets. The door went from dried out and unprotected to a rich walnut, with a finish to face the weather for years. Bob is a craftsman and a preservationist - a rare find these days.”

E. Callaway

Bob did an absolutely incredible job bringing our long neglected, nasty looking front doors back to brilliance! He really put his heart into his work, and it shows. Over the course of seven days he worked his magic by hand and machine sanding down to bare wood, conditioning, staining and marine varnishing. His work was meticulous, and he was extremely careful to bring out the long forgotten natural beauty of our doors. And as an added plus, he was extremely responsive, professional, friendly…the list goes on and on. He is nothing short of amazing, and I highly recommend him. Thank you, Bob!

D. Howard

Thank you Bob, our place in Leiper's Fork looks beautiful. Your work is flawless!

L. Hays

Thank you Robert for completing my beautiful doors! Your expertise is greatly appreciated.

J. & C. Miller

Thanks again Robert. You are amazing at what you do.

C. Small

FINISHES

BEFORE

AFTER

BEFORE

AFTER

Detail of Distressed Antique Door

PREPARATION

Marine Quality Stain/Varnishes

I'm always asked, "do you have any exterior clear coat products that last longer than polyurethane?" My answer is yes! Your grand entrance should weather much longer than exterior poly's tend to last. Some popular stain products have wax in them as well, which prevents the penetration and adherence of clear coats into the wood, making it easier to peel and crack. The synthetic components in poly break down fairly easily with UV exposure, allowing moisture to erode and discolor the wood.

Also, original manufacturers coatings look nice when new, but they are generally thin, lacking in adequate UV properties. So even if you get a new door, chances are you'll need to strip it down and refinish it sooner than you'd like. It's better to strip and refinish what you have with long lasting products, especially since most people have frames, sidelights and/or transoms that are in just as bad shape.

The stain and clear coat products I use are some of the best on the market including UV resistant products that combine two in one stain and varnish, while others are rich oil-based stains and varnishes—the kind they use on yachts. These high-end products level out nicely so brush strokes are minimized, bringing out the beauty of the wood rather than drawing attention to the application technique.

Preparation—Key to a Great Finish!

Finish coats are only as good as what’s underneath them! If your door is peeling, flaking, badly worn, or corroded looking, chances are the door was either not prepped correctly, not stripped or cleaned properly, poor finishing techniques and/or it was simply neglected for too long. It's time to get it prepared to last! My surface stripping involves contour scraping on details, and random orbital and detail sanding with Festool sanders—98% dust extraction HEPA filter vacuum system. These European sanders used correctly, do not leave swirly marks like the orbitals found locally.

Smooth & Durable Paint Finishes

My painted surfaces are comprised of fully tintable primers and finish coatings that can be built up to a smooth leveling finish. This means you have 3 or 4 layers of the exact specified color which will hold up much longer, and hide nicks and scratches. Other primers on the market cannot be tinted to darker colors which will be exposed if the topcoat is scratched. The available primers on the market do not level well showing deeper brush strokes that you cannot hide.

My painted top coats possess both acrylic and alkyd components for hardened finishes that expand and contract with the wood. They will not crack over time like oil-based paints which are hard, but less resilient, or chip and peel like latex paints. Combining these finishes with skilled application techniques makes for a smooth finish.

Steel Entry Door Finishes

Steel and wrought iron entry doors with bars and floral scrollwork are a specialty of mine. They offer great protection for a home but they are not maintenance free. The thin baked on finishes from the manufacturers are not very UV resistant and oxidize, turning a blotchy gray over time. For many doors, the coatings fail and start peeling and cracking. These coatings don't always adhere well to the fillers used to hide imperfections in the door, necessitating complete stripping to bare metal or sanding and feathering if the problem is minimal. This problem is worse on the thinner 10 ml metal as opposed to the heavier gauge 12 ml.

Care needs to be taken sanding metal as it scratches easily. Care needs to be taken painting the iron scrollwork because paint can lap over on all sides. Brushing techniques must be flawless to achieve a mirror-like finish, and the quality of paint will also determine weather brush strokes stand out or blend in. Re-coating steel doors with high quality European paints an metal primers hold up much longer, look beautiful, and are easy to touch up and maintain.

Good Preparation—Key to a Great Finish

PRODUCT CHOICE

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Products Appropriate For The Project

When deciding on products to make your doors look their best and hold up under abuse, consideration must be given to these three things:

1. The hardness of the wood

2. The amount of deterioration your door has undergone

3. Choosing a color that enhances the look of the door, coordinating with the exterior color palette.

The Hardness of Wood

Some woods are very soft and don't take stains well unless they are pre-treated.

Soft Woods: cedar, douglas fir, juniper, pine, redwood, and spruce. For this variety of wood, I pre-condition the wood with proper techniques to minimize absorption in softer areas to even out the look of the stain application.

Hardwoods: alder, hickory, mahogany, maple, oak, teak, and walnut on the other hand take stain more evenly and don't need a pre-stain treatment.

Deterioration

When the UV rays of the sun break down the clear coatings then moisture penetrates the wood discoloring and deteriorating it. If there's discoloring the wood may need to be bleached; in either case, the old coatings need to sanded down to bare wood to prepare a clean surface for staining. Some doors have a thin veneer of wood glued to plywood which can't be sanded too much. If it needs to be heavily sanded I sometimes recommend painting the door with an oil-based high-bonding primer, then finish coating with oil-based or acrylic/alkyd paint instead since stain doesn't take well to plywood and glue.

Color Coordination

Doors are always the focal point of a house and as such are an accent. An accent color can either be completely different in contrast with the trim, walls, and roofing, or it can pick up on an architectural color.

How do you pick a front door color to go with your exterior house colors:

A clash occurs when colors are too close in value (how much lightness or darkness the colors have), Show more contrast on the light/dark scale.
A clash occurs when colors are too close in hue (how much red, blue or green the colors have), Show more contrast or sameness in color choice.
A clash occurs when there is a mismatch in chroma (how much intensity or toned-down appearance one color has against the overall color palette). Show more contrast or sameness in the brightness of the colors.

As a colorist, I always perform a color evaluation to help my customers arrive at the best color combination for their homes.

Exterior Metal Doors

Metal or iron doors are an elegant choice for your front entrance. Though they are both elaborate and protective, they are not maintenance-free like folks would like to believe. The coatings that manufacturers use on them are not very UV resistant so the paint tends to oxidize or turn a pale blotchy gray over time. Oxidation must be removed prior to recoating to restore your metal doors.

I use a fully tintable (even to black) high-bond oil-based primer from Europe and apply two coats of durable acrylic-alkyd paint that levels to a smooth finish. The doors will not only look brand new but hold up longer than they did originally.

Synthetic Doors

Doors made of fiberglass or other composites can't be stained with penetrating stains like wood. Gel stains are the solution, but those stains must be applied to mimic wood grain if you want them to look like wood. Many of my customers thought they had mahogany doors because they looked like wood, but they turned out to be synthetic. The only other choice for a finish is painting for a solid color look.

Historical Door Restoration

Early American home entry doors are always in need of preservation measures for historical authenticity. Many of these doors are one-of-a-kind items with beautiful detailed carvings and patterns indicative of the early Americana time period.

The Department of Interior Regulations on Historic Homes

If you own a historic home, it is a good idea to follow The Department of Interior regulations for historic homes. A few of these regulations state that the historic character of a property shall be retained and preserved...the removal of historic materials or alteration of features and spaces that characterize a property shall be avoided...each property shall be recognized as a physical record of its time, place, and use.

The DOI also says that the distinctive features, finishes, and construction techniques or examples of craftsmanship that characterize a property shall be preserved...deteriorated historic features shall be repaired rather than replaced...where the severity of deterioration requires replacement of a distinctive feature, the new feature shall match the old in design, color, texture, and other visual qualities and, where possible, materials.

The historic door shown here had all the coatings eroded, and you can see the end of the preparation stage where I had to restore the old wood, preserve the architectural reeding and florets, fill the cracks, and smooth its surface while allowing some of the time-worn distressing to show. Now it is ready for several new coats of stain and varnish.

The detailed pic under the preparation stage pic is a close-up of the restored antique door with several coats of stain and marine quality, highly durable, UV protectant varnish. The old window in this door was loose and had to be replaced so I carefully removed the wooden muntin strips that framed it, removed the old glue, ordered a tempered glass window, installed it with new glazing push points, and replaced the cleaned-up muntin strips. The door is now completely restored and the client very happy with the end product.