Restoring original doors

[Ericaceae]

Has anyone tried taking sheets of ply off original doors - what a lovely 60s addition
Were they in some state underneath with nailholes, and was it difficult to do without causing more damage?
All our doors upstairs have ply over the top, but sound promisingly hollow underneath crosses fingers

I havent had to take ply off but have stripped original victorian and edwardian doors - i love them. Good luck!

You won't know until you try... If it's any help, my friend removed an unpleasant boxy wooden fire surround to find a beautiful Edwardian fireplace underneath. Good luck!

Yes, lots of pinholes underneath, but no massive damage. Once painted you can hardly see them - obv if you’re going to wax/varnish it matters more, but the finish is never going to be immaculate. As DH always excuses any fault in anything, it “adds character”

I was most upset about the vandalism to our newel posts & balusters though. The bastards hacked out chunks of the fat part of the newel post & nailed in some of the balusters to attach the hardboard to. Beautiful pitch pine & it all had to be replaced Bastards

They also replaced the downstairs doors completely, with 15-pane glazed doors. Granted the house is fairly gloomy inside but they were hideous.

We have recently acquired some reclaimed doors downstairs. I’ll post pics of a painted upstairs one & waxed downstairs one in a sec.

Original (1892) bedroom door. Very fancy moulding on outside, none at all on inside.

(The good thing about the hardboarding is that at least it stopped the moulding getting clogged up with yet more years of horrible 60s-70s-80s paint so less stripping required.)

Reclaimed Edwardian doors - simpler moulding, both sides. They had never been painted, only varnished & subsequently hardboarded.

(The old handle hole will be filled, but the joiner ran out of time before Christmas )

Your doors are lovely, @GiantKitten !
Second lot of pics are very similar and same period as the ones we have downstairs, so I'm hoping for good things.
Oh our house is full of "character"
Next job is dropping £400 on some pretty heavy-going artex annihilation!
And I'm so jealous, @Knittedfairies ! Ours are long gone.

We did! Had a fab company who collected them (we'd already taken off the ply by jamming a screwdriver in the gap and 'popping' it off) and stripped the paint, filled the holes and returned them in about a fortnight. Best thing we ever did. Really worth it.

Thank you, Ericaceae - I am very pleased with the "new" ones (although the one in the pic turned out, after hanging, to be a bit twisted & has to be forced closed...). They are much more solid than the modern repro ones we had before, & way prettier.

Luckily Artex is one hideousness we didn't have, though there was lots of swirly heavy-duty anaglypta, all painted magnolia, & unbelievably horrible dark brown plastic-coated fake wood stuff on both downstairs chimney breasts, & bathroom all pink anaglypta & shiny black glassy trim. (We moved in in 1983, I think the 70s were worse than the 60s!)

No lovely fireplaces here either - just 2 horrible modern ones downstairs (shiny grey tiles & concrete fake stone).

Anyway good luck with the de-Artexing, & your doors. IME getting the hardboard off is quite easy, & very satisfying - once you get under one of the edges, with a thin blade like a large flathead screwdriver, you can move round gently lifting a bit at a time - just like pulling teeth

Our Edwardian ones were stripped & waxed by professionals - they actually did the stripping by hand in the end because they were worried that the standard dipping process, even without water, might make the panels split.

But they said they never do any filling in case customers aren't happy with the end result (I can see that could be an issue with some!)