Do you have Wooden Garage Doors?
If you do, then you know that those doors don’t take long for the colors to start to fade, or for the water to start to sink in instead of beading away and the surface to take on that white caulky film. At this point, you would be looking to have your wood doors refinished.
Last fall, we took on refinishing two sets of wooden garage doors that needed some help. The doors were starting to peel, there were some knicks, dings and that white caulk was starting to appear and take over.
We started our work with sanding the doors from the previous coatings. The clear coats and stain were not the easiest to get off. With our Festool Orbital Sanders and 60 Grit Sandpaper, it took two days
starting the sanding process
both the doors have been sanded down to bare wood.
here we used small sander to get into the tight areas.
With the doors completely sanded down to bare wood, we were ready to start staining them. But then we saw the edges behind the door seals, so we made sure we sanded those down to bare wood as well.
getting the wood ready behind the door seals
Staining Wooden Garage Doors
Stain! We had to add some conditioner to the stain to make sure the wood took it in uniformly. We used small rollers to apply the stain, then clean rags to remove the excess stain from the surface.
the stain being applied to the doors
one door completed!
With the doors stained and dry, we started the clear coat. Large doors can be difficult to get a uniform surface coat applied with our streak marks, brush marks, overlapping marks and uneven sheen. We found out that mineral spirits are the best to use in order to thin solvent-based materials. Paint Thinner can be used, but Mineral Spirits are a more pure blend.
I have to admit, we had one issue on this job when it came to the clear coat for the doors. Our original choice of exterior clear coats were not available anymore. So, we used Man O War Urethane. We must have had a bad batch; nothing but problems. Sheen was off, dry times were off, overlap marks and penetration was not what it should have.
After doing some homework, we found a different product that is used for marine boating use – Epifanes! I will never use anything else again! I had to have it shipped because it is not readily available to me, but it was well worth it.
Doors are done!
