Wood Help
I am purchasing a brownstone that has beautiful old doors (both pocket and regular), with great original hardware (unfortunately, all covered with very old paint). Same with stair railings. Can anyone share any contractor\carpenter recommendations to strip and stain the doors\railings? Any idea on the costs? Thanks for your help.
I am purchasing a brownstone that has beautiful old doors (both pocket and regular), with great original hardware (unfortunately, all covered with very old paint). Same with stair railings. Can anyone share any contractor\carpenter recommendations to strip and stain the doors\railings? Any idea on the costs? Thanks for your help.
A little tip about cleaning paint off door hardware or any other harware. Get yourself a cheap cooking pot or use an old one you can throw out. Boil water and place your hardware in it. The metal will heat up releasing the paint. It works like a charm every time. If there are several layers of paint, you may have to do it 2-3 times as the layers come off one after the other. Whatever paint is left, you can remove with the finest steel wool.
As far as stripping paint off wood, if you have 20 k to pay someone, great. However, twenty years ago, when we bought our brownstone, we, as well as all our renovator friends, used to do it ourselves. Yes it takes time, yes it is messy, but it has to be one of the most satisfying jobs. It took a lot of time, but I guess back then we know this was a labor of love which would take for as long as we owned the house.
I stripped my mahagony hallway railing, including all the spindles from the third floor down. I used Rock Miracle, a scraper, lots of old newspaper as well as steel wool. I did four spindles a day, and the most rewarding was to oil those four afterwards.
So slow down…. use the 20 K for emergency money or take a vacation as a reward for a job well done.
Anon 1.19, the gentleman who did our wood stripping was Victor Rojas, and we found him on Park Slope Parents. Here is the link with commentary/contact info about him:
http://www.parkslopeparents.com/community/Services/houseandhome/painting/default.aspx
As a heads up, he prefers to do large jobs and also prefers to have control of the whole process. For example, our neighbor across the street just wanted their woodwork sanded, but Senor Rojas requested to do the entire job only (I think it’s more cost-effective for him this way). After they saw our results, they agreed.
Also, he speaks very little English and you’ll communicate mostly with his wife, unless you speak Spanish (high school Spanish doesn’t count). He’s clean, neat, friendly (we did alot of gesturing, as my Spanish is limited to the tourist variety), and I’d hire him again in a second.
He also has a great aesthetic and selected the stain he thought would look best on the wood (we were dealing with Mahogany, Cherry, and Oak, depending upon the room/floor). Each time he showed us the proposed color we agreed it was by far the best choice.
Finally, he’s very trustworthy. We basically gave him the keys to our house so he could come and go as needed. The only reason he’s still not working for us is that we ran out of funds 🙂 Otherwise, he also does iron work and many other things. Obviously, I can’t say enough about this guy. We were extemely pleased with his work.
Anonymous at 12:46 p.m., Can I ask who did the work for you? We’re planning to have our hallway wainscotting painted (right now it’s oak with a mahogany stain) because we thought it would cost too much to strip. Thank.
DIP N STRIP in Hackensack New Jersey will dip doors between 125 and 200 depending on the size. I have been there about 5 or 6 times in the past year. He will not sand them, but will dip the door and the hardware for you. He will strip any woodwork you have within reason. He has been in business for over 20 years.
106 Frederick St
Hackensack, NJ 07601
(201) 487-1115
The owners name is LOU.
Big Apple Stripping in STATEN ISLAND will also do doors for slightly higher about 175-250, but they lightly sand your doors when they are finished.
Good luck!
We had the following done in our brownstone:
Entrance:
Two outside front doors (these have glass panels so not much wood on these), both sides, plus interior moulding in the vestibule (around the outside doors and around the interior door)
Interior entrance door, both sides of door, plus moulding around the door on the side in the hallway.
Parlor floor:
Hallway including 3 pocket doors (one side only), pier mirror, mouldings around all doors, wainscoting in hallway, stairs, bannister (starting in the Parlor floor hallway and going up to the top of the second floor), and wainscoting all the way up the stairs to the second floor landing.
*Note that the previously mentioned had one coat of paint only.
Second floor hallway:
Bannister, stopping at the third floor landing; 3 doors(both sides), plus moulding around the doors (both sides)
Second floor bath:
Moulding around bathroom window plus wainscoting (2 walls, waist high)
Second floor bedroom 1:
Fireplace (with overmantle), 2 windows plus mouldings, 2 closet doors (both sides),plus mouldings, vanity and vanity mirror
Second floor bedroom 2:
Same as bedroom 1, with the addition of a third window and mouldings (no shutters) and a built in closet (2 door panels, 3 drawers below).
*Note that all of these had 3 coats of paint.
For everything above, the guy stripped, sanded, stained, and sealed.
This took 6 months to complete and cost $20,000. Depending on how much has to be stripped off (one coat of paint is far easier to strip off than 6 coats), this price would have to be adjusted upward.
tom, who dips these days for 125-200? I got prices that were crazy
Anyone know the cost of someone coming in to strip and refinish existing woodwork and pocket doors. Do they charge by the square foot or room? If so, any guestimates on how much?
Yes the pocket doors come right out. After you get the stop out, you roll one to the center, lift and pull out the bottom, then the top.
If you dip the door, strip all the hardware and have them dip that seperately. Then when you get your door back, give it a light sand, stain (if you want) and seal it with some polyurethane. If you are doing many doors, get a dremmel tool and engrave a little label on the bottom so you remember where the door goes coz you certainly wont recognize that beautiful door when it is done!
You can get pocket doors out without doing anything to the wall. You just need to take out the stop in the runner in most cases