How To Sand Your Hardwood Door Frames

One great thing about having hardwood doors in your home is that you can update and customize them as you see fit. It is possible to refinish hardwood to give your doors an updated, fresh style. If you own your home and want to update your style over the years, updating your hardwood doors is pretty easy. Being able to refinish hardwood is particularly convenient for homeowners who are able to do the work on their own and save money. This article focuses specifically on how to best remove your existing stain using various sanding techniques.

Handheld and Drum Sanders

In order to sand the door, you can do a few different ways. Most people tackle the job with a few helpers or laborers using power sanders. If you are only going to refinish one door frame, you can do the work with handheld sponge sanding blocks. However, if you are refinishing all of the door frames in your home, you should invest in vibrating power sanders. Power sanders are much more powerful, so you can sand large areas with speed. They work well on the flat surfaces, but you will still need to use sponge sanders to reach the corners of the door frames.  Basically, if you are going to use a power sanders, you will still probably need to use sponge sanders for parts of the job.

Two Sanding Steps

Regardless of what you use to sand, you need to do it in two steps. Start off with a medium grit (something below 100 grit) sandpaper. The rougher texture of this paper should work to remove all of the stain. Then, when the wood is exposed, you step up to a fine grit (something over 200 grit) sandpaper that will make the surface smoother. A fine grit paper will leave the wood smooth, but you aren't quite done there.

Steel Wool

After sanding, you need to complete the prep with some steel wool. Hardwood surfaces need to be extremely smooth before they can be stained. So, sandpaper alone will not suffice. You need to use steel wool and buff it out by hand to create a smoother, stainable surface. You have to do this by hand, so it can be a little time-consuming. But, you don't need to push down with great pressure, it really just requires a light buffing out.

Now, you are ready to stain your door frames. To learn more, visit a website like http://www.distinctivesidingandwindow.com

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