If the door is solid wood, by all means save it. If it is not solid wood but a solidly made door, saving the hassle of having to redo the hanging mechanism may be more trouble than saving a good enough door. But if the door won’t last another ten years, I’d replace it.

That’s my decision criteria in a nutshell. 🌰

It lasted about fifty treated with benign to not so benign neglect and another ten off it's hinges and hidden behind the bathroom, so with us taking care of it, it should last to be 100.

This is one of the issues with not having a car to easily get things and not being fully equipped with chisels and tools power or otherwise. And I just don't want to pay for or wait for someone to do it.

I am just surprised by the potency of that stamp ink.

Perhaps apply a paintable wallpaper to the door? It should block the ink, but not be thick enough to interfere with the operation of the door. (A mural paper, no painting required, might be fun!)

I actually considered a paintable wallpaper for the partition walls too, because they are kind of rough, and had only a smear of joint compound over the nails and joints which had never been sanded and mostly fell off over the past five decades. The naked drywall surface was so yellowed it was brown and I thought it was fiberboard.

Maybe part of the "homage" will be the bleeding stamp. But I think most of the basement will be an homage, because I did not spend a lot of time patching small holes or repairing where a dog chewed the bottom of the stair railing and so forth. I did spend a Lot of time a couple years ago on the stairwell down to the landing since you see all that when you open the door into the basement. As rough as some of the house was it had plaster walls with a nice coved radius on the ceiling.

Some originals and pre photos

Then ENTIRE HOUSE was painted this color. Tenants broke the globe on the fixture so I didn't save the fixture.

The walls are very rough and there is old efflorescence and deterioration from when the patio directed water against the house. There are a couple areas of the floor around the margins that are dirt. (But that's just wet from cleaning)

There is this rough hopscotch painted onto the floor with shiny paint and I think this is going to start wearing through again, because it would need to be spot primed, but I may leave this to wear through again as part of the history. It will never be a "nice" basement. It's too rough, the slab isn't even nice, and it occasionally gets storm water in it. (This is happening more frequently and at one point it was a "never" but that's a different topic, one that is probably too controversial).

All I want it to be a clean, cleanable basement that is organized.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lsM9eUUHgY

Paint with Rust-oloeum paint. Nothing bleeds through that.

Yes, I actually have some Rust-Oleum paint and primer on hand but it's brown or black. I just don't know if I want to buy another can of oil-based primer for spots on one door. That might sound silly but I am weird like that...you have to dispose of it then and again, not having a car it's a hassle getting all that stuff to the correct facility, miles away, and I always seem to find out about local outreach days for this right after the fact

Have you tried scrubbing the marks with alcohol yet? It can dissolve permanent marker ink and tho I doubt it would get it all, it might reduce it significantly. Old school stamp pad ink is water soluble, IMPE.

And I thought Kilz primer blocked everything?

The alcohol is a good idea. I would scrub well and just paint the color I want. Do a very thin coat first, let dry and coat again. If it doesn't show through, great. If it does, you can fix later. Why buy a new door for an area you just want clean and nice, but not perfect. (And the door fits as is.)

This is one of the issues with not having a car to easily get things and not being fully equipped with chisels and tools power or otherwise.

Pal, do you have a driver’s license? You can rent a truck from Home Depot rather cheaply. And sometimes libraries have tools to check-out.

KILZ oil base is a better blocker than KILZ water base. And I find KILZ or 1-2-3 kinda watery so I use Fresh Start. When I was priming the basement walls, I did one wall with Fresh Start because I had some and then one wall with Kilz, and it took three coats of kills to get the coverage of one coat of Fresh Start. The walls were supposed to be a khaki-tan color I guess but it was really an orangey color in a lot of lights. It was pretty terrible and hard to cover.

Most of the stamping is on the reverse side of this door from the one pictured.

This is the side of the door with one coat of paint with primer in one which I normally do not use, but the guy who normally mixes for me was not there, and this was a new person and didn't tell me that this formulation was paint plus primer, so I didn't know until I got home.

But you can see that one inadequate coat in the middle covers the bright spray paint probably mostly because the door is very orange itself. And you can see that the door has several random holes in it.

I am really letting go a lot with this because the doors in the main part of the house were all lacquered in a cabinet shop except in my bedroom and I did not really like the way they looked painted onsite by my very good painter. (it turns out that I am okay with a paneled door looking painted, but a single fingerprint or lap mark in a slab door drives me crazy.) I actually scrapped the entire bedroom door and got a new one, which needed to be machined for concealed hinges and such, and I covered the bedroom closet doors with paper. I did not replace the pocket door to the ensuite bathroom because it is rarely closed. So I spent a couple thousand dollars replacing a brand new door because I didn't like the paint finish. That's how weird I am about paint finishes. So doing a down and dirty paint job in a basement is a pretty significant change for me.

I do have a driver's license, but I think me driving something big enough to bring home a door would be rather dangerous. I have never driven in this area. The last time I drove regularly was over thirty years ago when I lived in Chicago. The last time I drove at all was right before my father died eight years ago. I was not a terrible driver, I never had an accident or a ticket, but I have been away from it too long I think to feel comfortable doing it.

And I have gotten to the point that I went on a rather long trip with someone who is not a great driver, but not bad either, but they rely entirely on Apps rather than common sense when driving so never Really know where they are going or how to get there, and toward the end of the trip I had a panic attack which I had to hide, and got a terrible migraine, and threw up as soon as I got home. I Hate uncertainty. I was horrified that I had such a reaction because normally I am not afraid of being driven anywhere including by taxi drivers in Manhattan. But after that I thought, what if I had a panic attack when I was driving? Totally irrational but seed has been planted

I would drive tomorrow where I grew up, but not here.

I would not replace the door either. If something bleeds through, it would bother me each time I saw, but since this is not main living space, it would forget about it by the time I am upstairs.

I don't know if you watched the video that I linked yesterday - professional painter challenged with covering multiple areas with different ink marks. Oil based primer was what worked consistently. Not what he expected - he thought shellac would be the answer.

He tested everything and shows what works and what doesn't work. So we know the answer is oil based primer.

This door is going into a basement that sounds like a typical storage space, not a fully renovated living space/walk out type of basement.

For a storage area partition you need something functional, not beautiful. Perfection is the enemy of good enough - you get diminishing returns for endless effort when pursuing perfection. Who really cares if the red ink shows through in your basement storage door? If it is beyond your acceptance criteria slap some oil based primer on that side and repaint. Only you know what is necessary, but the time you spend on making this door perfect or even better is time you will never spend with your mother, or child or closest friends. What is going to bring you the most joy and memories you will look back on with fondness when you are old?

Isn't shellac alcohol based? I'd think that would be a problem with most inks.

Pal, I'm a huge fan of Fresh Start too. My last two homes have had a lot of oil based paint on much woodwork (one home built 1926, the current 1955). Our only local store stocking Ben Moore products is now a functioning Ace Hardware and they carry neither the Ben Moore primer or their top of the line Aura paint - maybe the majority don't want to pay the price, I don't know. I do drive, living in a small coastal community its a must. We own a 4 door 4-wh drive truck and an SUV I could not live here without. I drive an hour for those two products when I need them.

When newly married, a lovely generous man who owned a local paint store taught me to paint. He would not sell me anything but oil based for woodwork and trims. Now, you almost can't find it to buy - almost all lines other than a primer or two are water based.

If its clean and fresh and you can make good storage space of it, I might be tempted to leave the bleed through in a basement as part of the homes history. I do love the hop scotch painted on the floor.....

I think it's an Ace Hardware policy of what lines they carry. My formerly independent neighborhood hardware store used to carry all Ben Moore. (And they used to be able to order you anything under the sun). It's still a good hardware store but now that it's Ace it's not the same.

Jennifer, I watched the video but was especially interested in the ad that ran before it, I didn’t even skip it! It was regarding a gutter problem I have. Alas, the ad has switched to something else. Oh, well, I did spy a ”suggested for you” video of handbells ringing Pirates of the Caribbean, so all was not lost.