Maintaining your exterior wood garage door

Beautiful wood garage doors are beautiful as well as EXPENSIVE and not something you want to think about replacing in a few years.

This is a step by step process we recently completed to keep these doors looking great and just like they were installed a few years back.

Garage Door maintenance:

1. The garage doors were washed with a soft bristle brush and water and quality detergent made for exteriors (Jomax cleaner).
2. After a day of drying we wiped down the doors for any dust and hidden build up of dust or pollen.
3. We noticed during our wipe down a few places were the stain had peeled and or flaked off most noticeably by the bottoms of the door were they are exposed to the weather more than the rest of he door.
   1. We find most damage occurs from extreme sun exposure and then splash back from rain at the lower parts of the door.
4. Blistering ad flaking places were lightly scrape with a carbide blade and then sanded smooth (do not over sand)
5. We then stained those sanded areas to blend with the rest of the door and on this instance we were lucky to know the stain color the doors were originally stained.  on some occasions a test area might need to be used to find the stain that is best matched.
6. After our repaired areas of stained had dried we applied one coat of Sikkens stain to the entire door working in sections and completing those sections before moving on to the rest of the door.
7. We also worked from the top down and watched for drips and wiped them immediately so they would not penetrate the surface before we were ready to stain that area.

This is a great Saturday morning project and a few additional tips is to:

• Wash the door ahead of time as water will ruin or compromise the finish, let it dry thoroughly.
• Place a drop cloth under the door and then close the door s what ends up on the ground will penetrate the surfaces it drips on and you will have a constant reminder of your garage door staining project.
• We also disengage the garage door opener so that it is not mistakenly raised during the staining process as well as the drying process as dust from above could fall onto the wet door and for your safety while staining.

Please send us any questions regarding your upcoming project and if you need assistance with your garage door staining project please contact us https://ramsdenpainting.com

Thanks you for reading.

Ron Ramsden, owner

Ramsden1-800-Painting

978-683-9119