I know I have said this many times before in this blog, but I love the diversity of the projects I get to do! A recent example was a fun faux wood challenge my client Cathie in Newton recently presented me with.
Cathie’s upstairs has 5 doors that were all painted with a faux wood treatment (along with all of the trim) well before Cathie owned the house. Unfortunately, one of these 5 faux wood doors was taken off the hinges years ago and stored next to the boiler. The extreme heat degraded the paint – leaving it faded, chipped and looking extremely out of place next to the other doors. When the previous owners sold the house, they re-hung the door, but left it in this rough state.
To bring this tired door back to life, Cathie called me in to re-do the faux painting! Last summer, I had touched up all the faux trim - which had many chips and nicks over the years that I was able to make disappear– so I was excited to do this project and finish making this space look like new again! The room behind this door also has a faux wood painted radiator cover that was worn and chipped, so Cathie had me fix this as well.
The first step with both the door and the radiator cover was to get them ready for paint. Both pieces got scraped, scrubbed and sanded (lots of sanding was required on this door!). From there, I used a quality bonding primer and base coat of paint to make a good stable surface that matched the “base” color of the other doors. With this step done, it was on to creating the wood grain using gel stains. In addition to matching the color, I also wanted to make sure I matched the grain of the trim and other doors!
With the door done, I moved on to the radiator cover. It was just the lid of the cover that needed to be addressed – so for this project, I matched my colors and grain pattern on the lid to the rest of the cover.
Cathie was thrilled with the results, and I was happy to see the impact of my work on her upstairs space!
Enjoy,
Jason
The door before rehab
Close-up of damage
The door after!
The radiator cover before
The radiator cover after!