When an entry door needs stripping rather than another coat
How to tell whether a front door can be scuffed and recoated, or whether the old finish has to come off first.
· 2 min read
Most front doors in Naples get recoated long after they needed it. The question people ask on the phone is whether we can put another coat over what is there. Sometimes we can. Often we cannot, and the reason is visible from a few feet away once you know what to look for.
What a door that can be recoated looks like
The finish is dull but continuous. It has gone flat on the sun side and it may have lost its colour depth, but the film is intact: no lifting at the panel edges, no cloudiness under the surface, no bare patches at the lock rail where hands land. A door like this gets cleaned, scuffed, and recoated, and the work is done in a day.
What sends a door back to bare timber
Three signs, any one of which means the old finish comes off:
- Lifting at the edges. Once a coating has let go at a panel edge, water is already behind it. Anything applied on top traps that water in.
- A milky or crazed look under the surface. That is the old finish failing inside itself, not dirt on top of it.
- Bare grey timber anywhere. Sun has burned through the coating and started on the wood. The grey has to be removed before anything is applied, or the new finish sits on a dead surface.
Why the honest answer costs less
Recoating over a failing finish buys about a season. The new coat fails where the old one did, and the second job is the same job plus the cost of removing two finishes instead of one. If your door needs stripping, we will say so at the estimate rather than after.
South-facing and west-facing doors take the most of this. If yours is one of those and it has not been touched in several years, it is worth a look before the summer rather than after.