Restore Your Door!
- , by Trudy Chuoke Trudy Chuoke
Do you put stuff off? Tell yourself I will do that tomorrow, or I do not have what I need or my favorite right now…. I will do it when it is cooler. And that is exactly what happened to my customer yesterday. His wife had been telling him that the front door looked bad and asking him to refinish the door. But he put it off and now what could have been an easy fix is going to be a real job.
How does your front door look? Take a quick minute and go look. Is it just dusty and dirty? Or it faded at the bottom because it faces west? Has the varnish started deteriorating? Have you lost the finish completely? These were my questions for my customer and luckily, he had pictures. What I had hoped was that it was going to be an easy fix, but he had waited too long, and this would be a complete refinish. He was going to have to sand and then re-stain the door. He will need to put two coats of spar varnish, not regular varnish, but a varnish made for outdoors, and then sand between coats. This will give him years of life on the door. He is young, he can do it!
But if he had recognized (or as he said listened to his wife) a year ago he could have caught the deterioration early and restored it quickly. And inexpensively. Let me tell you what I mean.
Restor-A-Finish is a refinishing product like no other. I love it when watching HGTV. I can see this product in the background. They are working on a table or furniture piece and just say they are refinishing this piece. Sounds like they have gone to a lot of trouble, when in fact it is so easy. Like as simple as dusting. Now you might have to apply two coats, but you literally just dust on a new stained finish to your table or furniture. It will do wonders for an antique piece. It will cover white rings, fading, oxidation, smoke damage and surface scratches. And it is a permanent fix. I love it because it restores the patina of wood, not covering up the wood finish. It goes deep into the wood without removing the finish. And although I am not big on antiques, I have read that keeping the original finish will maintain the character and value of an antique. But we are not talking about antiques, we are talking about a door. And so just as Restor will bring back the original color of an antique, it will do the same for your door bringing back the original stained finish from the top of the door to the bottom where the west setting sun has beat down hard on the finish. But you must do this before the varnish fails. And what I mean by failed, the varnish is still intact. The varnish cannot be peeled, or chipped. It does not have to look great, but it does have to be there. And that is what happened to my customer, the finish was gone. And you must have a finish….to Restor-A-Finish.
After using Restor-A-Finish, apply SunShield to protect your finish on the door. These two simple products will cost you under $25.00 and take you less than a couple of hours counting dry time. If you use Restor-A-Finish on your interior furniture, use Feed-N-Wax as a follow-up.
But bottom line, most projects are a simple fix…. if you catch it early. Speaking of that, looking around my home while watering I found a soft spot of wood at the bottom of a door. So, I am finishing this article and going to tackle this project before I have to call a pro and replace a door. Wish me luck! Tell you all about it in the next article.
Here is a quick tip….
If you are having a tough time removing an aerator because hard water has acted like cement between the aerator and the faucet, wrap the aerator in rubber bands. Then using an adjustable wrench, you can get a good grip on the aerator and not scratch the finish of the faucet. Now take the aerator to the hardware store and match it up!