New doors

In our quest to restore some late 60's charm to the house, we decided the new 6 panel doors just weren't going to cut it. They are plain jane, kinda ugly, and for the most part really poorly installed (to see what we mean, check out the difference in the gap inside the trim in the picture below). In addition to that, as the summer has gone on and the humidity has gone up, some of them don't shut quite right. So out with the old and in with the new!

Now, if this were a traditional 60's home, it would have flat panel doors in a warm gold. We wanted to bring back some of that feel, but update a bit, so we tested out quite a few colors.

After looking at them in all sorts of different lights, against the floor, and with the rest of the trim color (since we weren't painting it all) we decided to go with a deeper brown called espresso. 

In prep for staining, we taped up the knob and the hinges. 

We started with a pre-stain treatment. Now, since these doors are oak, we didn't technically have to do that, but it does help even the color out and since the edges of the door are pine, we thought it would be worth the extra step. 

Once that had set for about 15 minutes, we gave it a light sand and then it was time to get started. First we mixed the stain and strained it to make sure there wasn't any particulate. 

We started out brushing, but switched to using a cotton cloth after the first coat. It did the same job and it was a lot easier. Plus you don't have to clean out cotton rags. 

Then we waited 24 hours, flipped it over, and stained the other side. 

When we got done, the door looked a little, well, strippy, because of the way the paneling was laid out. I didn't mind, but Matt was a little leery of the look. Luckily, it grew on him. 

The last step was poly. We chose flat so that it wouldn't be too glossy and brushed it on. After 24 hours, we flipped it over and did the other side. Then we sanded it lightly, and repeated the process to give each side a total of two coats. 

Now we were really careful to make sure the poly didn't pool anywhere, but when we did the first coat on the second side somehow we missed wiping up the edges. So we tried to clean it up with sanding, but that just wore down the stain, so we had to restain a bit. It came out ok, and luckily it's on the back of the door, so you only see it if you are in the room and the door is closed. On the up side, we learned a lot.

And here's the finished product:

I think it looks really nice with the color we picked. Now we just have 5 more doors and 3 sets of closet doors to go!