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I have a 3 family brownstone and am finishing up a renovation. I am now to the front doors and here is Brownstone problem #923. I am on my last nerve. These doors are double doors and were painted a matte black and had lovely glass plexiglass inserts, which I was going to replace with beveled glass. I was planning on doing some repair to the doors (strip the paint, sand, wood filler, etc and repaint).

I arrived home from work on Friday to see what my contractor had someone do. One of the doors was slathered in nasty pinkish brown wood putty, applied like plaster in glumps with apparantly the intention of sanding it down and painting. He told me that the doors were a wood patchwork, apparantly 100 years of repairs and attempted repairs. Apparantly someone took a heat gun and burned them and the bottoms have wood rot. Well, wood putty is obviously not the solution to wood rot and burned doors. In fact the unpainted wood putty is already flaking off this Monday am.

I guess that this might be a common situation — Paint holding together an antique patchwork of wood. My building has become an eyesore in one day. I asked the contractor to scrape off the wood putty, sand the doors as best as possible and make them as presentable for now by painting the door for now that was stripped until I can figure out how to really repair them. One is also badly warped, apparantly that one has a grafted plank of wood (a repair?) that has contributed to that.

The worker also dripped stripper and black paint over the plexiglass door “window”, which of course doesn’t come off (any way I know), so I am stuck with this crap until I decide what to do with this set of doors.

I may have to spring for a new door. It is a simple design with a large panel of “glass” in each double door.

Does anyone has any experience with this kind of door mess?

Does it sound salvagable or do I go to a mill shop and bit the bullet for a new door or are there first aid methods?

That is the first question. The second question is for experienced brownstoners. Is there light at the end of the renovation tunnel? Is it a train? Aside from the fact that I have been building a good head of steam with my contractor about different problems, I think I am just tired of this. This is a shameless bid for encouragement. Thank you.