One of the bigger projects in doing some reno’s to the home.
We finally were able to replace the front doors that happen to go through two hail storms.
The first time, the hail damaged the timber itself, and the insurance had the repairs only restain and recoated the timber. However, instead of using varnish like it had been done originally and spending the time preparing the surface properly, they had used a polyurethane clear over the top, which years later, cracked and blistered the original varnish underneath and thus stripping the varnish/polyurethane off the timber. Sadly, these doors are actually made from cedar, which is even more heart breaking.
The second time, the hail was only smaller then the '96 hail storm, but it had 15 mins of it. As you will see the hail did get up to the underside handles of the door. Now this door is about 3 metres back from the gutters edge.
Whereas on the inside the door looks perfectly good.
As the damage to the door was too much (the outer paneling was cracked and peeling itself) we decided to replace the doors with new ones. However, the old doors will be repurposed into a coffee table (another project for me to do).
So there was nothing wrong with the timber jambs, I had stripped the stain and varnish coatings off it and replaced them with these doors.
But, we were disappointed with these doors, mainly due the door being made mostly from MDF, which has it’s place for some things, but not on exterior doors, let alone the price there are asking for it. It wouldn’t be too bad, if they had put on moulding on the inside of the door instead of routering out the pattern they had. When you go the stain the door, instead of haing a timber grain instide, you have a plain colour of the stain, and when you see that the stain does on plain MDF, it is just a plain color, and generally is darker than the timber veneer that is on the door.
But the door manufacturer, not only routered the inside, they had done it to the outside, and the thickness of the door inbetween where they routered made the door only half as thick as the door should have been. But on the outside of the door, not only they had routered the outside, then added a moulding on top of it, which only magnified the depth of the moulding.
It just made the door look ever cheaper. So, I decided to modify their routering efforts. I was going to fill in the routered area with timber and make the moulding better to our tastes.
So I milled some Tassie oak from being squared (one of the right) to two different profiles, one for the outer side of the door just flat surface with chamfered edges (middle), and the same profile but with two scalloped runs (one on the left) as a remnicient of the replaced door which had it on the vertical mouldings on the from door panels. Both these mouldings are actually designed to sit inside the routered area of the door panel, thus leaving filling in the gap of the the routered area.
Thus when added into molding it changes the look to the following:
I have to do another coat of stain on it, and when I’ll have it ready, I will post the final picture of it.
