Speaker Stain Front Door

Ms. Speaker's two identical antique front entry doors on her duplex that were pretty weather worn with the varnish and stain weathered off.

She didn't want to take them off and sent to a shop for refinishing for she didn't have two temporary replacement doors, so I came out and refinished the outer facing on them there at her house over the next several days.

I stripped down the two doors down with a chemical stain/varinish stripping agent.

The decorative doors had intricately detailed carvings on them with quite a few corners and tight spaces.

I pretty much used a detail brush (looks like a toothbrush) and stripped and scrubbed the entire old finish off.
















The cypress's wood grain was heavily grooved from years of weathering, so sanding it much would have erased a lot of the ingrained details. She really wanted to retain the character of the door.

I couldn't get some of the old finish out of the ruts, so I did the best I could with a nylon and wire detail brush. 













Ms. Speaker said that she wanted a tough finish that was weatherproof and had high u.v. protection for the doors always got a lot of weather hitting it with an excessive amount of sun.


She was concerned about not having to refinish them again anytime soon, also.

She also wanted to be able to see the wood grain through the stain, so that ruled out any kind of paint.













Looking through a Cabot stain selector brochure, she selected a Cabot semi-transparent oil based stain that was pigmented.

I applied the recommended single coat and reinstalled the two doors.

I thought the finish looked good for what it was, but Ms. Speaker didn't like the finish.
 
After a few more stain samples, she came to another decision.

I stripped the two doors again.

Going through the same stripping process, I finally got the old new finish off.

This time I applied a single coat of Cabot's Special Walnut stain on both doors.












After letting it dry for a day, I came back and applied a coat of spar varnish to both doors and then let that dry for a day.

I came back the next day and lightly sanded the spar varnish before I applied a second coat on them.

Ms. Speaker was now happy with the finish.



















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