Scratched Door Rehab


rmac

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I need to fix up a door in my house that has some scratches in it that have gone through the topcoat and the stain into bare wood.

I have had good success in similar situations by just applying some stain and then following it with a coat or two of polyurethane and living happily ever after. The new stain hides the scratches, but doesn't have much effect on old topcoat, and then the new topcoat makes everything look shiny and new again.

So far, so good. Except on this one door, some goofball (not me, believe it or not :) ) put some polyurethane over the scratches. As a result, it doesn't work to try and stain them. I guess one solution would be to sand through the sratches down to the bare wood, but I don't want to do that because 1) they're pretty deep, and I might actually make things worse if I tried to sand them out, and 2) I'm lazy.

So the question: Is there something I could use to color the scratches before applying more topcoat that would work on top of the varnish that's already in them? Like some kind of glaze? Or a brown Sharpie, Or a topcoat with some color in it? Or ... ??? What would you try? For the record, the color I need to match is fairly dark.

Thanks,

-- Russ

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I just googled fix scratched furnitue, and this sounds promising http://www.ehow.com/how_10040_fix-scratches-furniture.html good luck. Seems I've also seen some colored filler sticks that you heat with a electric branding iron and you fill the scratch with this material and wipe off the excess. I've never tried any fix like these, I'm just spit balling.

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I just googled fix scratched furnitue, and this sounds promising http://www.ehow.com/how_10040_fix-scratches-furniture.html

Higron, thanks for the link. I don't quite understand the lemon juice and oil thing, but the crayon idea sounds like it might work. In fact, I think I remember seeing some crayon-like putty sticks at the Home Depot. They might work better under a topcoat than a regular crayon. I think I'll try that first and see what happens.

Oh, boy .. another trip to the BORG! :)

-- Russ

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Well, I didn't have much luck with crayons or markers. They made the scratches a different color, but didn't really hide them all that well. So I took Ace's advice and stripped the door down to the bare wood. That was kind of a pain, but not as bad as I expected once I put away the sandpaper and started using a card scraper to remove the old finish.

Thanks to everybody for the hints.

-- Russ

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Touch-up makers can take time getting use to. Just like anything in finishing. You have to play. Maybe two coats of the lighter mark and one coat of a darker marker. Learn how to ignore the color names. Use your eye and work the various "color" of the markers.

Good for you taking on that door. :)

-Ace-

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