Restoring a vandalized wood door

This job was more about paint than about painting. I got a call from a friend saying that his apartment building front door had been vandalized over the weekend. Well, he wasn’t exaggerating! It looked like a entire can of white paint had been poured on this beautiful door. Very often doors of apartment buildings in Paris are done in a faux wood finish but this one was lovely, real oak. It was a shocking sight.






I called Henri for help, technical advice and moral support. We stripped as much of the paint off as possible with heat (electric paint stripper). Where the varnish was intact, this technique worked fairly well however, rainwater had slowly but surely damaged the lower part of the door. The varnish just hadn’t held up and so the white paint penetrated into the grain of the wood making it quite tedious to remove. I had to sand, use steel wool and finally remove the paint with a knife in a rather surgical way. It was quite annoying and obsessive work. After all that sanding, the damaged parts of the door were very dry and no longer had the same patina as before.

So here I was able to use a decorative painting skill. I mixed some turpentine, linseed oil and siccative together making a glaze, and tinted it with some fine art oil paint (earth tones). I applied this patina on twice. I think the linseed oil nourished the wood, which seemed excessively brittle for oak. I let it dry about 3 days, then went back to varnish. I first gave a coat of satiny finish to the parts of the door that I had worked on. The following day I varnished the doors entirely. Another job where, if you hadn’t seen the problem, you would never have known that I had worked on it.

Il agissait ici plus d’un problème de peinture que d’un travail de peinture. Un ami m’a contacté pour me dire que la porte de l’immeuble a été vandalisée pendant le weekend. Il n’a pas exagéré ! Quelqu’un a versé un litre de peinture sur cette belle porte. Souvent, les portes d’immeubles à Paris sont fait en faux bois. Celle-là est en vrai chêne. J’étais assez choquée.
J’ai appelé Henri pour un soutien technique et moral. Avec un décapant thermique, nous avons enlevé pas mal de peinture mais sur le bas de la porte, la peinture a pénétré le bois. Il fallait poncé avec de la laine de verre puis on a fini avec un couteau, comme un chirurgien. C’était pénible.
Ensuite j’ai du nourrir et patiner les parties abîmées de la porte. Un peu de métier de décoration, enfin. J’ai fait un glacis teinté très gras car le bois était sec. J’ai appliqué cette patine deux fois, puis j’ai attendu quelques jours avant de vernir. J’ai ensuite vernis deux fois pour le protéger bien. Encore un travail où sans connaissance du problème, mon intervention est invisible !