Victorian house - keep stripped pine doors or paint?? Noddyholder?

[iddybiddy]

I've always had a soft spot for stripped doors and I do like ours but they're a bit too orange. And I think the orange tones can throw other colours off a bit.
So, am wondering if I should: just live with them, paint them white/offwhite, or try to fiddle with the colour of the pine to make them lighter and more neutral (is that even possible?)
I think the painted doors will look more crisp and smarter, but there's something quite wholesome and nostalgic (if not authentic) about the natural wood.

WWYD and why?

I'm having the same dilemma at the moment. Ours are a combination of painted and vanished, sometimes both on the same door. It looks bloody awful.

Not really helpful, sorry!

Paint.

We have just removed 11 doors and begun the marathon that is painting them white. They were stained (slightly too orange! I know JUST what you mean) and made some areas of the house look darker than they needed to, and other areas kind of clashed with the room colours. I prefer wooden doors to painted hands down, but was unable to find a way to lighten the stain, so went for white in the end.

One thing that might be worth looking into is the cost of buying new doors. I assumed it would be cheaper to paint them, but when we brought the stain sealer (you need this to make sure the wood stain does not leak through the other layers of paint), primer/undercoat, and enough satinwood white paint to cover all 11 doors (2 coats) on both sides, it was a lot more expensive than I had assumed. And because you have to wait for each coat to dry (some of the doors will be having 4 or even 5 coats of various stuff, by the finish) and some of those coats take 16 to 24 hours to dry - it is a VERY long job. Maybe doing all 11 doors just before Christmas was a bit optimistic!

We are on the home straight now, all stain sealer and primer/undercoat done, but still plodding through the final coats. The house is a lot colder with all the doors taken off! (You can paint them in situ, but our 3 year old was never going to be able to leave them alone, so we took them off to ensure less fingerprints in the final coat...)

It might have been cheaper and it would certainly have been quicker to just buy some new, already painted doors and get a carpenter to hang them!

I hate stripped pine, especially on doors so I would defintely paint.

Jointhedots - lah lah lah not listening! Seriously though, sounds like we might be following in your footsteps! Was it really not possible to "de-orange" the doors? If ours were just a bit paler/greyer I could live with them.

Luckily we have quite a bit of undercoat and eggshell/satin etc leftover, so maybe we'll just paint them one by one. I don't fancy buying new doors when we have original ones in situ, just feels too wasteful.

What about colourwashing them iddy ?

I did this with mine after stripping them all back, but not wanting to put solid paint coats on them again.

Once the wood is prepared, I applied watered down emulsion paint to it, working it right into the grain using a cloth. This mutes the 'orange wood' effect, but allows the wood grain to show through. Once dried I coated with a satin varnish.

I might be just in that: this is taking too long. Why did I not just BURN THEM ALL and start again phase of DIY, which is not actually rational...

I spoke to a professional about the de-oranging and he had no ideas on lightening the stain without sanding the doors back to the original wood and restaining with a lighter colour. I thought that sounded more work, and possibly more risky to DIY than painting. You could try though!

shimmering - when you stripping them back - do you mean sanding all the previous finish off?

Agree JTD that sanding so many doors sounds painful.
I'm thinking we might experiment with the back of a lesser door and see what we can do, falling back on painting if we can't get a good result.
I just noticed rustins do a wood bleach... I wonder if that would be any good?

JoinTheDots I would've suggested doing that as well. Sanding them right down with an industrial sander (not a bit of sandpaper wrapped round a block of wood ) then staining them the preferred colour.

Alternatively shimmering's idea sounds good.

You'll struggle to paint them if they've been varnished orange, I think. I'd get them dipped professionally.

They don't actually feel like they're varnished, they feel like untreated wood so if they've been finished in something it's either worn off or is very matt/non-visible.

How can i tell what the finish is? I'm thinking I may have to experiment on the inside of the understairs door.

The more I'm looking at them today, the more I'm thinking we should paint them.

Would it be weird to paint the downstairs ones and leave the upstairs ones stripped?

Yes iddy, strip them back to the bare wood, smooth with sandpaper, then use a watered down emulsion (any colour you like) to 'wash' the wood with. make sure the wash is well rubbed/brushed in, and rub off any excess with a cloth. Allow to dry, then varnish to seal it.

I used to restore furniture, and used this method many times, either on its own or as a backdrop to painted images on the wood. Thirty yeas on some of the pieces I did for myself are still as good (in terms of wear and tear) as the day I did them.

• years *

our doors are quite orange and are stripped, they dont have anything on them at all now, its just the colour they have become over the years - if they are original they are 150 yrs old. they were panelled over when we moved in and we took the panels off and then got them dipped to remove any other paint/varnish on them and thats how we left them. the colour did seem strong to begin with but we have grown to like the colour. We did think about painting them but all our skirting/ingoes are all painted white gloss and we thought painted doors would be a step too far with the paint.

we thought about replacing them but we couldnt get anyone to make doors the size we needed, they were too tall (7ft) and too wide(3ft) for 99% of the joinery workshops we spoke to

We have a large Victorian house. We have had the upstairs ones stripped and finished in danish oil, they look lovely against the stripped landing floor. Had them done professionally for about £70 per door and that included them coming and taking them off and re-hanging them and they were away for about 2-3 weeks. couldnt be arsed to do it ourselves The downstairs remain painted white against a tiled floor. It doesnt look odd because you cant see them both at the same time..

We have the opposite to Angie - have stripped downstairs and painted upstairs. Our upstairs ones were poor repros and a bit orangy, so needed to be painted (5 coats of satin gloss!) but the downstairs ones are all original. They are a nice dirty grey orange colour, not at all bright. I wonder if a wood wax from www.fiddes.co.uk/index.php would work - you can pick up individual tins from ebay - you could call the company to ask advice on best colour, but something like Rugger Brown might work?

Paint them all.

mmm, not sure what to think. The thought of 5 coats of paint is daunting - why does it take so many coats? Is it knots from the pine? Or does the stain sort of dye the paint?

Please paint them.

Stripped pine didn't look all that even when it was in fashion.

Paint.
The Victorians would have had painted doors.
The doors were probably made to be painted so the wood is probably not the best and the different panels might be different colours.

our original doors don't have any knots in them whatsoever - I guess they are a different grade of wood than used now. when we had the decorators in to do the rest of the paintwork they started of painting everything with a primer, then 3 coats of undercoat, each coat rubbed down in between then gloss on top of that. if there was any knots in any of the wood(we had to replace some of the old skirtings and facings) they were treated first so any oil coming out of them wouldn't stain the paintwork.

Hi,

I know it was some time ago, but can you confirm where you sent your doors for stripping/sanding/oiling please?