A Door fit for a Villa

This gorgeous door once guarded the front of a Mexican villa.  Sadly, all the matching doors on the inside of the villa were stolen by vandals.  This last gorgeous door remained, hiding all the damage that was going on within.

When it came to us the finish was in shabby shape and the wood had shrunk so the panels were coming loose.  We began our process by stripping the door.  It came out very clean but also exposed some other problems, which I will go over in a bit.  Once stripped, we took the door apart, which wasn't to difficult a task, as the wood panels were already separating.  There were quite a few things that needed to be repaired with this door,   dry rot

needed to be dealt with, there were cracks in some of the panels,  the 1/4 round beads hiding the shrinkage had to be removed,  and one of the long upright styles had warping which we needed to straighten out.  So quite a bit of repairs.  We got the door back together beautifully though, strong and sturdy and ready to guard another house.


The next task was to give it a new finish.  The door has a 'Cedar' colored water based stain.  We had to do some magic here because the panels weren't all the same color.  So we concocted a 'special sauce' to blend them all.   We also did something called 'highlighting' or 'glazing'.  This creates a permanent shadow in the carvings so that the features are enhanced.  This service is always available and we encourage it on carved pieces.  It is extra though, so not every client goes for it.  But when they do opt for 'highlighting' the piece always looks amazing.  We finished it off with a 'satin' sheen exterior quality finish.  The door could once again stand proudly in any 'villa' doorway and our client was very happy.

Restoring an Old Front Door

We strip a lot of woodwork and doors here at our shop, but it is much less often that we get to complete the job and have a beautiful finished door to show you.  So I am excited to have this lovely piece to put up on the blog for you.   As you can see from the pictures, it came in to the shop painted blue!  This isn't really a problem for us though since we have the tools, the chemicals and the know how to get that blue paint off the door, and out of all those little crevices.

We then did our 'prep' sanding which is a two step process we have come up with .  With our two step sanding we have found that we get a really smooth wood, that still takes color very well.  

The door is stained with a special exterior quality water based product.  The stain color is a combination of 2 parts 'Coffee Bean' and 1 part 'Cedar'.  It is a really beautiful deep reddish brown.  Over that stain we have applied a water based, exterior quality finish in 'Satin'.   The result is a really beautiful, classy looking door that will stand the test of time.