Door Varnishing & Door Painting

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Steps to Applying Varnish on Doors

You can approach varnishing a door as an afternoon project or as one worth two or more days of your time, and the difference is immediately noticeable. A quick coat of varnish will undoubtedly improve the door's appearance, but a proper finishing job usually requires extensive preparations and multiple coats. Going to the trouble of taking the door down and laying it flat makes preparation easier and allows the varnish to level more evenly.

Preparation

Removing the hardware is preferable to covering it with masking tape, and you can do that most easily after you've laid the door flat on sawhorses. If the door has a previous finish, you may want to strip it off with a chemical stripper, but it's possible to recoat a finish in good condition. If you choose to leave the old finish intact, it's important to thoroughly wash all sides of the door with detergent and water. Whether you remove the finish or not, the door needs to be sanded, but first you should apply wood filler to any areas that need it.

Sanding

The process of sanding is necessarily more involved if you strip off the finish. To do it properly, you'll need to make several passes with a palm sander and progressively finer grades of sandpaper. A rotary tool fitted with a sanding drum accessory makes short work of corners and crevices inside molding. If you are varnishing over an old finish, the palm sander isn't necessary because all that's necessary is to scuff up the surface and sand down any filler you applied. You can scuff with 150-grit sandpaper, but you may need 120-grit paper to level the filler.

Staining

Staining the door is appropriate if you've removed an old finish or you're varnishing a new, unfinished door, and it gives extra ultraviolet protection to an exterior door that gets sun. Most stains can be applied with a brush or a rag, and you should allow them to penetrate for several minutes before wiping off the excess with a dry rag. Always use strokes that go with the grain of the wood, whether you're applying the stain or wiping it off. Most stains need up to 24 hours to dry and penetrate before you varnish over them.

Varnishing

You can apply varnish with a brush or you can spray it. In either case, several light coats are better than one or two heavy ones. After applying a coat to one side, let it dry, then coat the other side. After that side dries, both sides should be sanded lightly with fine sandpaper before recoating. Some varnishes, especially marine-grade products, take several hours to dry, so you should expect the varnishing process to take two days or more, depending on how many coats you apply. Sand before each coat you apply, but be sure not to sand the final coat.

Tips

Time and age cause doors to bind and stick. As your house settles, doors sag in their frames; in addition, repeated painting and dirt create buildup. Or, a door may have been misaligned from the start. A variety of problems occur with doors. Some, such as damage to their surfaces, can happen to any type of doors. Other problems are unique to the way a door operates. Pocket doors can jump their tracks, bi-fold doors can pop out of their pivot mounts, and hinged doors can become stuck in their frames.

In this article, we'll help you repair all of these types of interior door problems, beginning with hinged doors, which can become balky, sticking in their frame, they can become too loose to seal properly, or their surfaces can become damaged.

Please note that many problems that occur with exterior entry doors, such as a front door, are the same as those that happen to interior doors.

HomeTips

Mark the door with a light pencil line where it binds against the jamb.

Fixing a Door That Binds

If a door binds or rubs against the jamb, identify the spots where it binds by sliding a thin strip of cardboard or wood between the door and the jambs. Then mark the areas where the door is binding with a pencil. Look for a buildup of paint, which usually is the culprit. Hold a sharp wood chisel flat against the surface, and slice off the excess. Then smooth the surface with fine-grit sandpaper. Coat the door edges and the jambs with paraffin.

If that doesn't do the trick, try adjusting the hinges. Many doors bind against the upper corner of the jamb or drag across the carpet. Close the door, and check how it fits in the jamb. Look for tight spots, and make sure the top edge of the door is level. If it appears to be more than 1/4 inch out of level, the cause is probably settling or sagging.

You can usually solve this by replacing the center screw of the upper hinge with a longer, 2 1/2-inch screw, angled slightly toward the jamb's center. First, clean off any dirt, and repair or replace any bent hinges. Drive the screw in snugly, and tighten the other screws that secure the hinge. If they can't be tightened, repair the screw holes by packing them with short pieces of a glue-coated dowel. Then replace the screws.

Another culprit in a door that binds is humidity, which can cause a door to swell and stick. To fix this, you will probably have to remove the door and sand or plane down the high spots. Before removing the door and planing it, first try sanding the areas with coarse, followed by finer, sandpaper.

HomeTips

Plane the edge of the door, working from the corner toward the center.

To plane the door, you'll need to remove it. For instructions on removing a door, see How to Remove a Door.

How to Plane a Door

Using a pencil, mark the area to be planed on both faces of the door. Typically, you should be able to slide a dime between the door and the jamb along both sides and the top.

Set the door on edge, and, using a jack plane with a sharp blade set to make a very shallow cut, plane in line with the wood grain to avoid gouging the wood. Plane the top or bottom rail or hinge stile if that's where the door binds. Avoid planing the lock stile—not only is the lock side usually beveled to allow for a tight fit, but planing it can also compromise the way the lock set fits. Hold the plane at a slight angle and flat against the surface. At the door's top and bottom, plane from the corner toward the middle to avoid splitting the ends of the stiles.

Don't take too much off—remember, the door will shrink back up when the air is drier. Finish by coating the door edges and jambs with paraffin.

Fixing a Loose Door

fix loose door strike plate

If door rattles, adjust the position of the strike plate.

This is generally the opposite of sticking in the jamb. When an interior door rattles, this means the door stop and/or the strike plate are not tight enough. If the strike plate has a flange in the center that can be bent slightly to tighten the fit, remove the plate and use a pair of pliers to bend the flange. Otherwise, you may have to adjust the position of the door stop on the latch-side jamb.

To do this, first use a utility knife to cut the paint seal between the molding and the jamb. Then place a wooden block against the door stop, and hammer the block gently toward the door to provide a tighter fit.

The best way to stop an exterior door from rattling is to install resilient weather stripping around its perimeter, which also will help insulate your house. Look for the vinyl bulb type and follow package instructions.

There are many methods for repairing or restoring woodwork, and they work just as well on wood doors.

You can sand out minor scratches, fill gouges with wood putty, replace rotted or broken sections with epoxy filler or by gluing in a new piece, and so on.

If a panel in a Colonial-style door is cracked or split, you may be able to reglue it without removing it from the rest of the door.

If you have to remove a panel or replace it completely, try prying off the moldings that surround it and hold it in place. On some panel doors the moldings are routed in and can't be removed. In this case, one option is to cut away these integral moldings carefully. After you've fixed the panel, buy new moldings to match the rest of the door's trim.