Do you like the look of stained wood interior doors? Many people do. But what if your house has doors that are painted? What can you do?
I’m aware of two things you can do to fix this little issue. One is to install new solid wood doors and stain them. This can get a bit expensive. A wood door suitable for standing can usually cost well over $100 each, and that does not include installation. Two ways to do this, get a prehung door which includes the door frame. And replace everything that’s there. This is more expensive than just installing a slab door.
But if you get a slab door, you need to do installation work on that also. You’ll need to drill 2 holes for the lockset, and you’ll need to rout out spaces for the hinges. This is not a job for an amateur.
Another option is to stain the doors that are already existing. A gel stain is needed to do this. Just putting a stain on a painted door is probably not going to work out too well. What you need to do is first put a base color on the door. I’ve had good luck using a base coat which is basically pumpkin colored. Depending on how light or dark you want the finished product to be ,get a lighter or darker shade of pumpkin. Then put the gel stain on top of the painted area. Get a few small containers of gel stain and try them out to get the proper color that you want. If you don’t like the color when it’s been done, simply paint it over and do it again. Vary the strokes and the thickness when you apply the gel to simulate the wood grains.
Let me know how this works out for you.
