A wooden door restoration service I wish I had known about a long time ago

Repairing, refurbishing or restoring wooden doors in a house is a real challenge. Especially if it's old and built on the model of a fairy or manor house, with tall, simple, double, sliding, folding doors. And if the doors have lots of small windows, it's even more complicated, and I know from experience what that means. Eight years ago, not knowing what I was getting myself into, I decided to fill my time by making some changes to the house, at which time I decided to reinforce the walls and restore the doors. Made of wood, eight feet high, with a thousand little gems and painted countless times over the years.

While I was at it I wanted to make them as good as possible, so I looked for a team to take off all the layers of white paint applied over time, patch the holes and replace the broken, torn or decayed parts. I explained all these wishes to the team I was working with, they said they understood and ... the nightmare began. Either they were too big and had nowhere to take them to be cleaned down to the wood, or it was impossible to clean the frames, or that if they replace parts of the door they might not be the same, plus that glass of that thickness was no longer available (!!!). It was an experience I'll remember for a long time. How nice it would have been to meet the SaveMob.

I told you about them before when we talked about saving 100-year-old Chippendale furniture. I liked what they managed to do then with that furniture, but I always thought that furniture is one thing and doors, windows are something else. I recently found out that they refurbish and restore including doors and they do it the way I wish my doors had been 8 years ago.

They have a specialist door refurbishment team who travel to the customer's home. The doors are picked up, nicely packed, taken to the workshop where they are refurbished. Doors are refurbished on site at the customer's home. The paint or varnish is cleaned down to the wood, no matter how many layers have built up over time. The wood is grouted, repaired and checked for decay. If it is, the wood is replaced so it doesn't infest the rest of the wooden items in the house. They are then sanded, stripped and finished, depending on how they were originally or the customer's wishes.

At the workshop, work is done in a leisurely way. It's not that the heels aren't worked on with great care and attention, it's just that the heels are simpler, without as much detailing and machining as the doors, which are a real challenge. If the doors are painted, the same steps are followed as for the frames: clean, check, replace damaged parts that can no longer be saved, treat for decay, sand and repaint.

If the doors are veneered and finished transparently, the steps are more difficult and must be worked on with great care. In general, old doors have intricate patterns made of veneers of different woods, something like inlays, but on a macro level.

Over time, the veneer is the first to fail due to moisture, mechanical shock or low strength or ageing of the adhesive. As a result, it needs to be re-laid.

It's not easy to find large pieces of veneer that look like the one that needs to be replaced, but leaving it to the specialists takes the worry out of that.

If the veneer is aesthetically pleasing, the door will most likely be varnished, not painted. Choose the bath so that it resembles the original and stain the veneer. Then apply gund and clear varnish, with intermediate sanding to give the door a smooth, smooth surface.

Even if they are done separately, always check that the door is similar to the heel. At the end the door is packed, transported to the customer's home, fitted and checked so that everything is just as the customer wanted. Like I said, I really wish I had known them when I was redoing the doors!