How Much Does It Cost To Strip & Varnish Doors?
Cost to Strip Doors
| Job | Description | Labour |
| 1 | Let’s assume the chap is doing everything, i.e. removing one door, taking off its handles, taking it to be stripped, picking it up in a weeks time, re-hanging it and re-fitting either the old furniture or new stuff you have bought, then coming back when it’s dry to wax it. I would charge a day for each door in this case because of all the messing around. Labour…£175.00 Stripping…£ 35.00 Furniture and wax…£ 70.00 | £280 |
| 2 | The same job for seven doors, without waxing would generate two days labour. Labour…£ 350.00, Stripping…£ 245.00, Furniture… £490.00. | £1085 |
Information Sheet on Stripping Doors
The best bit about getting your doors stripped is going to the “shop” to sort it all out. You’ll usually find it’s part of a big old restoration or reclamation yard, and there’s tons of curious old “interestingly priced” junk you can wade through.
If you’re getting your doors stripped, that means you are the type who will want to buy most of it. That’s until you look at the prices and have to plonk yourself down on a handy £400 bench!
I love reclamation yards (my brother owns one), but I’ve never found a bargain in one!
I’ve also probably stripped every door, in every house I’ve ever lived in (on the instructions of every wife I’ve ever lived with) and that’s quite a few, so I’m something of an expert.
If you’re taking the doors off yourself, leave the hinges on the door but remove everything else including the mortice locks.
If you cut around the hinges with a Stanley knife, there’s a slim chance that you won’t pull slivers of door frame / paint off, when the door suddenly decides to release itself.
If you’ve never removed a door and you decide not to trust me on this, you’ll find out!
You can usually leave the glass in. The process won’t damage it, but some ham-fisted bloke might. So if it’s pretty, take it out!
How will the doors get to and from the yard? Most yards will pick up and deliver for you but they will charge, of course.
If you’re sending several doors away, it might pay to identify each one with small nails hammered into the top corners. They come back beautiful but unrecognisable and if you have to try each one in each doorway…….
a) You will exhaust yourself
b) You will knock dirty great chunks out of all your walls. Wet doors are heavy!
Be prepared to spend an hour or so getting the last bits of paint out of the mouldings, and even gluing some mouldings back on again.
The doors get dipped in hot caustic soda, and that’s fairly unforgiving stuff when in a direct contest with 100 year old animal glue.
There will also be a couple of doors that come back with areas of “furry wood”. This is normal. Just sand it off when it’s dry.
Talking of sanding, just what should you do to the doors to make them look pretty after they come back?
Well, first hang them and let them dry out completely for a week. Then apply 2 coats of wax.
Each coat will take about an hour to apply. You’ve got 7 doors to do, right? Let’s face it, the tin will never get opened! So what? It doesn’t seem to matter to most people…who cares about a few fingerprints, anyway?
What about all the furniture you took off?
Well, most of it will be naff, so chuck it away.
This means you will need new ceramic knobs, coat hooks that look like a horny-handed blacksmith “wrought” the iron only yesterday and possibly new rim locks (which are the ones that screw to the surface of old doors).
Any mortice locks can go back in after the front edges have had the paint removed…oh look, they’re brass! Also, you might want finger plates…remember those jam-laden hands.
You will want all this furniture to look old, or actually be old. So, it’s going to be expensive…around £70 a door if I remember.
Certainly way more than the stripping itself will cost you!
FAQs 'traffic light' guide
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What's easy about this job…
Open or CloseIt's leisurely, satisfying work.
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What's tricky about this job…
Open or CloseGetting all of the paint out of the recesses in the mouldings.
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