Restoring a period front door on a Brighton terrace

Assessing a weathered front door before you touch it

The terraces around Brighton and Hove have some lovely original front doors, and a lot of them are the same age as the house. On the Regency and Victorian streets the door is part of the frontage, so replacing it with a modern one changes the look of the whole property, and in a conservation area it may not be an option at all.

When I look at a tired door, I am checking two things. First, where has the paint failed, because that tells me where water has been getting in. It is nearly always the bottom rail and the lower part of the door, where rain runs down and sits. Second, how sound is the timber underneath. I press a screwdriver into the suspect areas: if it is firm, the wood is fine and just needs stripping and repainting. If it sinks in, that section has softened and needs a repair before anything else.

Most of the doors I am asked to replace do not need replacing. They need the old paint taken off, a localised repair to the bottom rail, and a proper repaint. That keeps the original door, the original ironmongery, and the character of the house, and it costs a good deal less than a new one.

• Flaking, blistered or crazed paint, worst at the bottom rail and lower panels
• Soft or spongy timber on the bottom rail that gives under a screwdriver
• Dark staining or open joints where water has been sitting
• A door that has swollen and sticks in its frame after rain

Stripping back the old paint layers

A period door can carry decades of paint, sometimes a dozen layers or more, and a lot of it is no longer bonded to the wood. Painting over that just adds another coat to something that is already lifting. So where the finish has failed I take it back to bare timber.

For the flat areas I use a heat gun and a scraper, working carefully so I am softening the paint and lifting it, not scorching the wood. Around the mouldings and the panel edges, where a scraper cannot follow the profile, I switch to a chemical stripper that gets into the detail without damaging the timber. On older doors I stay mindful that early paint layers can contain lead, so I work wet where needed, avoid creating dust, and clean up properly.

Once it is stripped, I sand back to a sound, keyed surface and let the door dry out. On an exterior job that means picking a dry spell, which in a coastal town takes a bit of planning around the weather. Bare timber needs to be genuinely dry before any repair or primer goes on.

Repairing the bottom rail: the products I actually use

The bottom rail is where a front door takes its punishment, so it is usually where the repair happens. If the timber there has softened, I first rake out anything that is truly rotten back to firm wood, then stabilise the slightly soft fibres at the edges with Ronseal Wet Rot Wood Hardener. It soaks in and binds the wood so the filler has something solid to key into instead of crumbling timber.

For rebuilding the rail itself I use Repair Care Dry Flex 16. It is a two-part system made specifically for structural timber repair on doors and windows, not a general-purpose filler. It stays slightly flexible, so it moves with the door as the timber expands and contracts through the seasons rather than cracking away from it, which matters on a door that is opened and shut every day and sits out in the weather. For smaller, shallower defects a good two-part high-performance wood filler does the job.

On badly weathered, greyed timber I sometimes work in a little Owatrol oil, which penetrates and stabilises the tired wood and helps the primer take evenly. Once the repair has cured I build it slightly proud, then shape it back with a plane and abrasives until it matches the original profile, so you cannot see where the old timber ends and the repair begins.

• Ronseal Wet Rot Wood Hardener to stabilise softened timber before filling
• Repair Care Dry Flex 16, a flexible two-part system, for rebuilding the bottom rail
• A quality two-part high-performance wood filler for smaller, shallower defects
• Owatrol oil, optional, worked into weathered wood to help the primer take
• A knotting solution to seal any live knots before priming

Knotting, priming and finishing in a heritage colour

Before any topcoat goes on, I seal any live knots with a knotting solution so resin cannot bleed up through the paint and stain it, then prime all the bare timber and the repair with a quality primer or undercoat so the whole door is sealed and working as one surface. Bare wood left unprimed under a topcoat is the most common reason a repaint fails early.

For the finish I use an exterior eggshell or gloss, building it up in proper coats rather than one thick one, rubbing down between them. The colour is worth thinking about, because the front door sets the tone for the whole frontage. I work with the heritage ranges the house tends to suit, Little Greene and Farrow and Ball for the period colours, or Dulux and Johnstone's where the client prefers, and I will match in with the rest of the joinery and the street.

A south-facing door in Brighton takes the full brunt of the sun, the salt air and the driving rain, so the prep and the coats matter more here than they would inland. Done this way, a restored front door lifts the whole look of the house, keeps its original character, and holds up to the weather for years. If your front door is looking tired, I am fully insured and have been restoring and repainting period joinery across Brighton and Hove for around 20 years. ask for an estimate with a couple of photos and I will come and take a look.