Painting the hinges is just plain lazy the plus is they are easily stripped but not sure what you want from us as to the doors if you don’t want to strip and sand and stain then paint is your other option and espresso would not have been a color inthe original plan and IMO that color looks like a bunch of cheap Chinese furniture

Beautiful hinges and door woodwork. You might post on the gardenweb woodworking website http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/wood for additional advice.

Refinishing and restoring antique doors takes time and some practice to develop skills. For example, you can stain with something close to the original color, then paint each gouge's wood putty with matching paints and an artist's brush to mimic the original grain. It will take a while. Videos on the web.

transluscent espresso paint??? no. Those doors will take forever and a day to do properly. If you have want to do it, great! try sanding off the rest of the dark brown and see if you can get to raw wood. The putty marks? what apple pie said. There is too much damage to get them to look completely natural again. Pick out the best doors w/the least amount of damage and try to restore those. Look at salvage stores to see if you can find similar ones w/less damage, and restore those.

Do be careful of lead paint with old doors. I have had success in stripping pieces with Citristrip which is an environmentally safe stripper. I often paint it on thick the night before and then use a putty knife to scrape it and the finish off the next morning. Some old finishes will dissolve much faster than that. Zinsser makes a similar product.

I have not stripped doors that old - and yes, talk to some woodworkers and restorers because the doors may require a different finish removal process depending on what is on them.

I do know that stripping raised panels is a pain, though not difficult - just I can get all perfectionist and spend a lot of time with a straight pin getting gunk out of the crevices:) If I was working on an old door, I would not bother to fill in nicks and gouges if staining. The putty rarely takes the stain the same as the door and the repairs stick out. I would just strip and sand and live with any nicks - part of the history of the old door. You can fill in gouges if painting. Refinished, they could be lovely - and you can leave the trim in the home white if you want.

Unless the nicks and gouges are really deep they should sand out tolerably. Give it a try with the door you already have stripped and see how you like it. A matte finish will hide imperfections a bit better than a glossy one. If you put a clear coat over your stain it will help even out surface imperfections too.

Also learn to love the quirks. I've spent many an hour refinishing painted over wood in my house - sometimes you just leave the story there. One panel in my dining room wainscot has a burn mark from long ago when there was a wood stove in the room for heat - someone put a wire handled kettle a little too close to the panel... I chose to not try to erase it. It tells a little tale.

BTW - those are absolutely gorgeous hinges!

great advice, all. thanks

Those doors are original building fabric and should be saved at nearly all cost. They aren't all that bad either. Find a furniture stripper with a dunk tank, load 'em in the truck, and get a bulk price deal. Save the doors.

Has anyone tried soda blasting? I've started to research that option.

Low temp heat gun is my usual approach and I've also experimented with steam on old windows. Be very careful with stripper as it can turn paint into a gooey mess that fills every pore and dent. If these doors were originally stained and finished, the paint will often peel off the underlying finish with low heat and lots of patience. Just heat the paint until it starts to wrinkle and bubble and scrape before it cools. If you smell burning paint or see darkened areas of paint or wood, you are using too much heat.

A reasonable amount of effort will remove 95% of the paint and then you can finish up with careful applications of stripper.

Paul:

Any type of abrasion, soda, corncobs, whatever, is going to round sharp edges like those on the raised door panels. Not a recommended procedure.

That looks awesome!

thanks... lots of hours. Hoping it lasts another century

Those hinges alone are to drool over. The door looks great. Glad you are moving ahead with restoring them.

Looks beautiful. What techniques did you use?

very nice job. want a new career??

technique? I bought a bunch of power sanders and had my small boys sand the fine detail. their little fingers are so nimble. lol.

Hours later, I patched the gouges with red oak putty, used wood conditioner, stain and poly.

The door turned out to be part red and part white oak. Very pretty variation in the stained result.

They look fantastic! Way more character than the usual "paint them white".

What colour/stain brand did you use. You've inspired me to do my own doors!

minwax honey is the stain I used. I'm not sure if this stain matches the original in the house. Seems like I need a bit more orange like gunstock, but I'm happy how this door looks.

Don't worry about a perfect match - it is an old home, things don't match in old homes. The orange you see in the other woodwork is possibly the ambering that occurs with some finishes over time.

Wow! Having spent a small fortune to have our Victorian front doors stripped and refinished, I have to say that yours looks better :). Hope you have the patience to do the rest...

I did learn something that might be with passing on...

If you are going to restain, I wonder if it doesn't make more sense to spend less time sanding the detail work... just enough to clean imperfections and, of course, remove the previous finish. I'm betting the stain work would have turned out about the same.

Simply gorgeous. Give yourself and those small boys a pat on the back :)

How did you get the paint off your hinges?

Soaked the metal pieces in just under boiling water and baking soda for about thirty minutes. Perfunctory warning about lead paint...

While still mostly hot, I went at them with steel wool.

The door knob (found at a reclaim shop) and knob plate were also coated in paint. Worked well.

Beautiful door and hardware. I heard get an old crockpot from Goodwill and cook the hardware. That should be online for directions.

I haven't tried it... put here it is.
http://videos.hgtv.com/video/slow-cooker-paint-removal-0217683

Did you use any stripper on the door at all, or just heat gun, sanding and little fingers. How long do you estimate it took you?

Yes...I very much used citristrip. Messy, but it worked very well.

I don't know how long it took me. Things moved much faster after a bought a cheap orbital and belt sander from harbor freight... well worth the cost. And I discovered that steel wool was faster on the detail work. I actually learned a lot this project.

paul, if you have any more doors (and I'm sure you do) try SoyGel instead of the citristrip. Especially if your young boys will be around it. I've been refinishing wood for years and use this stripper. It's all natural, works just as well as the chemical counterparts, and the best part is that it cleans up w/water! just wipe it off with a wet rag. you don't even need to wear gloves. it costs a bit more, but the convenience is so worth it.

Beth H. your workshop must be the most fascinating place...

Also cute new profile pic :)

lindsey, you made me snort! fascinating is not a word that comes to mind when I go out there to work! lol

and thx! last year w/my new purple ends.

I wanted soygel... but no go when I wanted it from my local big box. Good suggestion though...I kept going through rubber gloves.

Uline.com for rubber gloves. We go through them like crazy and find them both the most durable and the best value.

Paul amazon or The Real Milk Paint Co. has it. I've ordered from both. And I think Walmart also has it with free shipping. Now called BlueBear Soy Gel.

Thank you for all the great info

When your working with lead paint you should know that it can in fact be sealed and treated. In addition if you have children in the house the over coating that bonds with the lead now has a bitter additive which causes the child and or host to spew out the paint due to its bad taste. Ecobondlbp.com

The best I can tell on my doors and hardware is that somebody maintained the stained doors for most of the doors existence...the only layers of paint that I noted were latex and relatively recent.

I might have poisoned my family a bit when I started cleaning up the hardware I bought from the reclaim store...it totally slipped my mind to do a lead test on those.

I poisoned mine too when years ago I stripped paint off my stairs...oops