Stripping the paint off and refinishing a craftsman-style fir front door

The front door on my house has some nice craftsman detail to it. But since I've had the house, it's always been painted and that paint was wearing off after 15 years. Being in Oregon, I'd always suspected that there was some nice Douglas Fir underneath that paint. In April and May 2020, the pandemic provided the opportunity to take on the task of refinishing the door.

I decided that I would try stripping it with non-toxic paint stripper. This required moving the door to work on it so the first challenge was to find some way to close off the doorway and keep the house secure. I did this with spare piece of plywood and a four pipe clamps that stuck through some holes I drilled and then tensioned against 2X4s in the inside. Somehow the boarded up look seemed fitting in the first weeks of the pandemic.

I'd watched a few videos on stripping paint using Smart Strip. So I got some of this and the paper that they sell to go on top of it to keep it from drying out. I also bought some plastic brushes and rigid plastic scrapers. It being an exterior surface on an old house, there was certainly lead paint in there so the lack of dust with stripping approach appealed.

I globbed the stripper on with a disposable paint brush, put on the paper, and waited a day or so. I was expecting it to be a sort of satisfying process where the stripper did its work and then magically the many layers of old paint just scraped right off to reveal beautiful wood grain. That sort-of happened in some areas. But mostly it was a very messy, methodical process of scraping and brushing. I did it in my driveway to contain the mess. To some extent, the cool spring weather slowed the process.  

I think that I did the Smart Strip cylce at least three times: paint it on, cover it, wait, scrape with a plastic scraper and a bit with a metal paint scraper, brush with a plastic brush, then wash with water. Each time I did it, I focused more on the problema aeas. I finally figured out that in order to get the paint off of the trim that lines the tiny windows of the door and the relief areas of the door, I needed to pry them out and work on them separately with a stripper and a brush.

Once I was down to bare wood, I could still see there was white paint that tainted the appearance of the wood. So I put on my respirator and hand sanded the wood. I did this repeatedly and thought it was looking pretty good. Then I asked my 11 year old what he thought, and he said, "you can still see paint, Dad." More sanding ensued.

The door had various gaps in places where different pieces of wood intersect. Perhaps the original glue had come out. After sanding the trim pieces, they didn't fit back into the door seamlessly. There were some gaps where they came together with each other. So I used black epoxy wood filler. I like the look of this on reclaimed fir. That's what I used on my kitchen table. It goes with the black that bleeds from old nails.

To finish the door I used Benite wood conditioner and then a couple coats of PPG Proluxe Door and Window Finish Clear Satin. This type of Cetol product worked great on my fence and looked great on the door.

The door turned out great. It definitely has a restored sort of look to it with imperfections visible. But it is a really stunning touch on the house. The first pic makes it look darker. That might be because it was taken right after the project was done. The lower pic is three years later. 

Craftsman style cedar fence update

The craftsmen style cedar fence is now about 16 years old. By about year 10, it started having some issues that needed attention. These could have been handled by better design at the beginning so see below for some remdedies.

The first major problem was the posts rotting out where they touched soil. Perhaps this could have been mitigated by having the concrete anchor rise up higher to keep soil away from the posts. The way that I chose to remedy the problem was to dig out the concrete post bases and put in steel brackets anchored in concrete, leaving a couple inches of clearance between the base of the post and ground. This was very labor intensive, as it required removing the previous blob of concrete that anchored the posts, but it was a good way to save the fence itself, which remains in good condition.

I used post bases produced by Campbell Fencing in Portland, Oregon. They sell these through Mr. Plywood in Portland but I'm not sure if they are available anywhere else. Basically, they are 34" and half of the length goes in the ground and into the concrete anchor and the other half is above ground. After digging out the globs of concrete I'd poured 15 years ago, I used concrete tubes to keep things a bit neater.

Simpson makes a similar post base as well, though they don't recommend it for fences and it is only about 17 inces long. They also have these EZ-post bases that are meant to be screwed into to concrete from the sides.

The other problem with the fence was some rot on the horizontal 2X4s. I think this was due to sitting water between the trim strips that are nailed into those 2X4s. I replaced the 2X4s and put them in at a bit of an angle so that the water would tend to flow off them. I also replaced the trim strips and used a paint mixer to leave a 1/16" gap between the 2X4 and the trim strip so the water could flow out.

Furthermore I cleaned off the mildew on the fence with water, bleach and a scrub brush and repainted it. I used this PPG ProLuxe Cetol SRD Exterior Wood Finish product in Natural 078, which used to be called Sikkens Cetol. I found that this held up amazingly well over the years so I was glad to use the decendent of that original product that I put on the fence and didn't touch for basically 15 years. In the case of the replacement pieces on the fence, I painted them with this finish (including ends) before putting them on.

Assembling and reassembling parts of the fence wasn't fun, but at least I had a nail gun this time around.