On Painting Old Woodwork

When I was just a teenager, one of my dear friend’s parents bought an enormous Colonial Revival house in Northwest Washington, DC’s 16th Street neighborhood. This was decades before I worked for OHJ and before I really understood the significance of what I was looking at, but I fell in love with this house. It was three stories tall, with original double-hung windows, impressive oak woodwork, and paired entry doors inset with elaborate beveled glass detailing. It had a sweet full-width front porch, too—the kind you could sit on for hours on a hot summer evening, sipping lemonade and imagining you lived in a quieter time. Inside, the grand staircase turned 180 degrees on the first landing, a massive hallway flowed to the second floor bedrooms, and cozy little window seats were built into dormers on the third floor. It was a house you could get lost in, with nooks and crannies and pocket doors, the sort of place I dreamed of owning even at that young age.
When my friend’s family moved in and started to decorate, I was tickled to see the grand old dame come back to life with the furnishings and collections of people who appreciated her history. They were the type of folks who meticulously researched bathroom details—returning the beadboard, freestanding clawfoot tub, and pedestal sink to their proper places in the room when it needed fixing. So when I arrived for a visit one day, and climbed the stairs to my friend’s bedroom, I was shocked to see that the handrail and balusters on the third-floor staircase had been painted—and not just any old color, but a bright turquoise! (OK, it wouldn’t have really mattered what color the paint was, but the intensity of the shade added to the offense—at least to me). Mind you, this was pristine woodwork; it had never seen a paintbrush. Before the paint touched it, it had been a perfect burnished honey amber color—the shade of roasted peanuts or a perfectly cooked Thanksgiving turkey—with a patina forged over nearly a century of wear from countless hands caressing it on their travels throughout the house.
“You painted the wood?” I asked (trying not to sound incredulous).
“Isn’t it great! We needed something to brighten up this floor,” came my friend's response.
I think I cried the whole way home.

Tags: editor blogs, painting woodwork

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Comment by John Rodgers on September 25, 2008 at 3:18pm: amazing how one person's sense of restoration is different than anothers. All of the original doors in my home were painted in a very bad faux grain pattern (literally, dark brown with darker brown vertical stripes). I started peeling away to find that prior to that they had all been painted baby blue, and eventually got down to the original finish--100 year old cypress doors with a dark dark stain (almost black). Same thing with the baseboards in at least two rooms.

Not sure why anyone would want to cover such beautiful craftsmanship, let alone in baby blue.

Comment by Chip Wright on September 26, 2008 at 12:15pm: Yea....sadly (as the old saying goes) "some people only have taste in their mouths." I was called in as a consultant on a project outside of Natchez, Mississippi several years ago to assist in the restoration of a Greek Revival Cottage, circa 1850. The exterior of the house showed typical degredation and the lawn, though overgrown, was very romantic and mysteriously inviting. When I walked through the front door I found (to my horror) a setting that had to have come out of an Atomic Age decorator's magazine. Everything had been painted either light blue, white, yellow, or....(and I hate to think of it)...pink. I am sure that the previous owners just wanted to "brighten things up" but geeez! The project took nearly two years and some very beautiful pine and cypress were uncovered. I will say that on the interior doors we discovered beautiful faux boix designs that must have been created by a master. All the doors in the structure were pine. When we discover design blunders we can only roll our eyes and rise to the challenge to uncover hidden the hidden qualities.

Comment by Terry on November 2, 2008 at 12:31pm: Worse yet; when I moved into my 1912 home, I found sheets of masonite (faux floral vinyl tile and--painfully--deer-in-the-woods scenes) glued to the plaster and lathe walls and, even more horrifically, glued to the backs of both the original-to-the-house kitchen and bathroom doors. I'm still trying to figure out how to remove the hard black gunk adhered to the kitchen door that is now waiting in the garage for a brilliant solution. I've left the masonite on the bathroom door and simply painted over it for now. Oh so painful.