After I get the bathroom 2 panel door stripped, I turn my attention to the 2 cottage bedroom doors. Both of these doors were completely trashed and I took them to 2 different places for repairs. The first place did a museum quality repair that involved salvaging the existing panel and hand carving new panels to match the existing panel. It looks amazing, but cost me a ton so for the 2nd door, I tried to find a more economical solution.

The first door was already pretty well stripped, so I started by applying some of the WD Lockwood dyes to match the lighter repairs to the old wood. After I got the match pretty close, I put on a coat of Viking Linseed Oil.

The 2nd door I found a carpenter in Scranton who was able to repair the door in the price range I was looking for. His fix involved replacing the entire panel and then glueing a piece of laminate on the panel to replicate the raised look instead of doing the hand carving. From a distance it looks great and I think it works with the cottage which is a blue collar place and isn’t high Victorian.

This door is more banged up and has a lot more dents with white paint that I can’t get out. I try to sand it out, but it’s hard to clean out all of the paint. After sanding, I dye the repairs to match the older wood like I did with the first door.

After the dye is dry, I apply the linseed oil like the other 2 doors. While the doors cure, I move back to some of the hardware.

In a previous post, I went through stripping all of the door hardware and rim locks using the crockpot. I liked the results from that but the stripping brought the hardware back to it’s natural gray color. I felt that the hardware should have been black, but I didn’t want to put a thick paint on it where I’d be back in square 1. For the bathroom door, I ordered a restored rimlock since the original door was lost and I could see the reminants of the original rimlock on the door jam. The rim locks had a nice matte black finish that was exactly what I was looking for. I emailed the the seller and he pointed me to metal dyes and wax sold by a company calld Nouveu.

I ordered the black dye and wax and went over all of the rim locks and hinges. After that dyed, I sprayed them with a coat of clear laquer and then applied the black wax. I think it came out great and has a black color without looking like the paint was glopped on to it.