Restore or Replace?
The doors and moldings in our 1850s townhouse were painted very drab “historical” colors by the prior owners. We cant figure out what type of professional would be able to help us decide if they are actually so historical that they are worth the expense of stripping and staining or if we should just replace…
The doors and moldings in our 1850s townhouse were painted very drab “historical” colors by the prior owners. We cant figure out what type of professional would be able to help us decide if they are actually so historical that they are worth the expense of stripping and staining or if we should just replace them. Is this a job for an architect? Interior designer? Specialty GC? Any help and recommendations would be greatly appreciated.
DONT WASTE your time with wood. I have a lot of experience with rooftop gardening, stick to plastic containers – preferably ones that are UV resistant. If you have to make boxes then use plastic wood – there are really nice 100% recycled plastic planks available
Sounds like you have original doors. One cost effective option would be to strip one door and see what type of wood it is. If it is a nice hardwood worth staining/varnishing, do that with all the doors. You can then repaint the moldings a color that you like, so long as they don’t already have a very bad paint job (i.e. so long as they are smooth).
I don’t think $20 to $25 per linear ft. is right, it’s less than that and probably close to $15.oo shop around, replacing is not cheaper ,it’s alot more.
You’re getting a lot of good advice here. We just spent about 80 hours to strip 70 linear feet of 100+ year old woodwork in on room, and then turned around and repainted it.
Why? Because the many layers of underlying paint, including cheap latex, would have been a bad base for new paint.
We used oil primer and a light-colored paint from Farrow and Ball for the woodwork and slightly darker paint for the walls and love the look. Very elegant.
Varnished wood is highly overrated, IMO, and replacing old molding with new stock close with to achieve a look similar to what you have will be dangerous to your walls and expensive.
If you have time on your hands, limited funds and be trusted to work with sharp profile scrapers and a tool like the the Silent Paint Remover (infrared), you can do this yourself. With any luck, you will find varnish as the first layer, and your paint, all 20 layers, will come off in one sheet.
OP, someone is taking you for a ride. This is like saying “I don’t like the color my walls are painted — should I repaint them or demolish the room and build another?”
I sincerely doubt even the cheapest, off-the-shelf pine molding at Home Depot plus the cost of installation could be less expensive than stripping your existing molding. Plus, needless to say, it will look wrong and cheap.
What’s more, even if you went the Martha Stewart route and had the wood custom-milled to match the profile of your existing molding, you would have to paint it anyway, since the wood won’t match your doors, won’t be the kind of wood they used back then since it’s no longer available, and won’t be the quality you want.
It is a misconception that all old houses had unpainted, varnished wood. Some did, some didn’t. Wood was often painted in the Colonial era and again in the 1910s. Varnished woodwork was popular from the 1870s through the 1890s. And one house could mix several different kinds of wood, some painted with fake wood grain, some varnished.
If your house has a mix of both, why not strip the wood in the parlor (where the best wood is likely to be) and paint it elsewhere? Off-white woodwork with colored or pastel walls is a popular look at the moment.
Joe Salem is frequently recommended on this forum. Maybe he’ll give you a better quote. 718-755-6527.
Lastly, it’s not just a question of the expense. If you have something original and it’s in good condition, why would you want to replace it with something fake? It’s tasteless.
It seems worth it to me to factor in the expense (both to the OP and to the rest of the ecosystem) of throwing out the existing molding.
A whole brownstone’s worth of molding could easily be a ton of garbage. Careful demo and a dumpster could cost many thousands of dollars (more if you live in a permity-type neighborhood), and for what?
A landfill is a little bit more full. Great.
Schultz is right. If you want to know if these are original moldings take some photos and try here http://www.nylandmarks.org/. If they are original and mostly intact they are defiantly worth restoration.
stripping old painted moldings on location generally runs about $20-25 per linear ft. You can buy new moldings for alot less, even $5 per ft; although unusual profiles, bolection moldings, and compound moldings can cost much more. The real problem is trying to remove the old moldings without damaging the plaster walls. There is cost involved in carefully removing old moldings, and re-installing new molding. Also, new wood moldings are not like the old growth wood moldings you’d find in a 150 year old house. Changing them out should really be a last choice.
I’m surprised that you got a quote to strip that is 5x the cost of replacing. I just don’t have that in the range of my experience. I would expect the opposite. I guess you are right, you need to talk to more people.
Also, what is the quality of the paint job? If it is a mess, then yes, you will want to strip it. But, if it is well painted and smooth, you don’t have to go to the trouble of stripping, you can just paint over it.
Years ago, when we did our house, we sent doors and shutters out to be dip stripped and did all of the moldings ourselves with peel away. It is a paste that you put on the wood and take it off 24 hours later. It does not create dangerous lead dust and has no fumes. We had kids after that and there was no evidence of lead in our house. However, it was a big job, but in our opinion well worth it. What people value about an old home is the original detail. So, unless you are adamantly, aesthetically opposed to what you have, I would try to save it.
Also, in my opinion, there is no sin in painting soft pine. It was not meant to be stained or left “natural”. Find paint colors that work for you.