One of the things I loved most about our home when we bought it was the front door. It is an arched doorway and super heavy duty. However, the condition of our door was terrible. The front of our house gets all day sun so the stain had been very badly faded and it was chipping all over.
We had never refinished any door or table or anything for that matter. So we made this a lot harder than it needed to be. First, project guy sanded the door (by hand) for hours and hours. He even took a credit card covered with sandpaper to get into all of the grooves. Many more hours.
After all of the sanding we wanted to try and stain the door a similar color to what was on it before. Did we use a wood stripper before we did this you ask? Nope! Didn’t know that was required after sanding. So here is the terrible result of what it looked like.
The stain didn’t absorb in many places and it was blotchy because we didn’t use a wood strip agent which we found out by this point was completely necessary. So, we scratched the staining idea and picked a paint color that ended up looking very similar to stain. It’s from the SW Historic line, Polished Mahogany.
This was the best decision we made throughout the entire project. It resulted in a very rich looking color that looks similar to stain. We used a poly top coat to protect the paint for the final step. I could not be happier with the result! We will also be investing in an electric sander. Face palm.
Her Idea His Project 