We have recently bought a new house built in 1920. Lots of charm with tons of woodwork. My wife and I are more partial to white, clean and open spaces and are having a difficult time deciding whether we should paint over the wood (beautiful wood!) moldings and door frames. We would prefer white but it feels sacriligous. Advice please!
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I'm glad you've decided to wait and decide after you've been in the house a while. You won't be sorry because no matter what you do, it will probably be quite different than what you thought you would do originally. Such is life when one moves into any new to them place.
Your designer is right. If you strip and refinish you just removed that patina I told you about. If there is damage, refer back to my first post here to see how to fix it. If you want to change the colour...well you can do it, but again, you may be sorry. You see most of that patina is in the finish (the original shellac) that changes as it ages.
If you are really bent on changing the colour of the wood there are a couple of things you can try. One is to get some tinted shellac (usually normal stores only carry white or orange shellac). If you have a Lee Valley tools around, head there and have a chat with one of the folks there that know wood (and boy do they know wood). They sell real true shellac that comes in various shades and that you mix yourself (not a big deal at all so don't be worried about that). You can add that right on top of old shellac usually. Do not, never, don't do it or you will be sorry, recoat shellac with varnish or any other top coat because you will get a big alligatored mess. Ask me, some dummy did that in the last house I had and it's a big job to fix.
For that mess I had or any other removal of old shellac the easy way to do it is to buy some rubbing alcohol (just the normal stuff although the Lee Valley types may know of another). You get some on a rag or cotton ball or whatever and just rub the old shellac a bit and it will soften and come off on the rag/ball/whatever. That leaves the original wood complete with it's original stain intact (and hopefully some of the darkened edges and detail if you don't go too nuts rubbing). You can either add a new stain colour then or just add the coloured shellac. If you use a new stain colour, coat it with white or orange shellac (orange gives a warmer, older tone). Much easier than using a caustic stripper and cheaper too if you get a great big bottle of alcohol instead of the small ones they tend to sell in stores (I asked my vet and he said he would order some in for me to get it in gallons, so just think of who would use gallons and see what you can do to use their source).
BTW, if you don't have a Lee Valley Tools around, find a good refinishing shop or fine wood carpenter (one who makes custom cabinets or furniture) and see if they can help you out with advice.
Otherwise I can tell you to get logged into http://www.oldhouseweb.com/forums/ where you will see various forums. There is one for post 1900 houses and those folks are all dealing with older homes and all the things that come up from repairs to refinishing to remodelling (but watch out if you go talking wanting your home to look like a loft because these folks love old houses because of the character and will talk you out of it). You can learn a lot there that will come in handy as you get to know your house. There are things in old houses none of the DIY books published lately can tell you about. It's also very interesting to see what gems some people have made out of really horrible old houses.
Thanks for the comments. REally a part of me does love the wood. Everytime I walk i the house I spend 5 min just starring at the trim and marvelling at the grain and detail. It really would feel awful to paint it just white. Yet alot of wood can feel just overwelming sometimes!!
Nevertheless after much discussion with my wife we have agreed to keep it for now as we can always paint it if we really dont like it but it will be much harder to back the other way. Actually I did think that even if it is painted we could just scrape it and bring it back to its original form. Good to know that that isnt the case. I also do feel that to paint the wood would strip this house of what makes it different and it does feel a bit "disrespectful" to the home. Quick question. My designer tells me there is no need to touch up the wood (strip varnish) and that it can remain the way it is. Does one never stain it or varnish it to achieve a different tone. Clearly new to the wood thing so apologise in advance if question is silly.Thanks
I agree with DustBunnyDiva. I think you bought the house because of the character it had which included all the wood. Live in the house for a while before you make any changes. Then you can see what you like and don't like and may come up with different ideas or design changes that you would not have thought of without living in it first.
We bought a house with alot of wood trim and doors. So, when we replaced the windows, we actually got wooden framed windows that are painted white on the outside but raw wood on the inside and then we colour matched our old trim and I stained and top coated the new windows including the mullens between panes of glass on the top of the windows. Alot of work but worth it. It would not have looked right to insert a white vinyl windows with the wood trim around them. We also bought reclaimed fir wood to continue the trim on some of the doorways and baseboards where we built a new wall and door way or took out the old kitchen cupboards.
While selecting a paint colour, we used the wood tone as our jumping off point. I wanted a colour that would go with the wood as well as our furniture, etc. and went with a goldy yellow colour called Maple Sugar. It 'grounds' all the wood trim in the room, IMO.
And here comes the "NOOOOOO! Don't do it! Are you nuts?" opinion. Sheesh, you can see painted wood trim anywhere but unpainted original is getting harder and harder to find (thanks to folks who run right in and start painting without thinking it out).
Now I'm just betting the description of that house you just bought had a line or two about 'original wood' or some such thing on the MLS because it's usually a huge selling feature. What you have to realize is once it's gone, it's gone. You can't paint it and then change your mind because when you strip the paint off you just took off all the patina and it's going to take another 90 years to get it back. You also can't just replace it because you can not get that kind of fine grained wood any more without salvaging it and it costs a lot to do that. Charm and character points drop dramatically to someone like me who loves old houses when that wood is ruined (sorry, but to me it's ruined the same as painting a fine old wood table... and this is sort of the same. Painting an old table is fine, painting a really really old table is not and it's the same with house trim to me. In Canada we just don't have a lot of really old houses like they do in Europe so we need to respect the older ones we do have IMO.). I don't care if it's fir or some great wood, once it hits a certain age there is no matching it for what it does for the mood of the house.
I know some designers say you have to do what you like, but you know as nice as Michael Penney's new house is, what has been done to some of that woodwork gives me a very queasy tummy. To me there comes a point in the history of a house when you owe it something and with me it's keeping old wood original if possible at all. It really breaks my heart to see a house that survived nearly 90 years in it's original glory until someone came along and decides to paint it just because. Decades of being as it should be gone and now it's just joined ranks of being like every other house out there.
On the practical side, I can tell you I have had a few old houses and the ones with the untouched wood were much easier to deal with than the ones with painted woodwork. When original wood gets dinged or scratched it's a real easy fix (just a bit of shellac on a q-tip fixes scratches right up) vs when paint gets dinged and it's a bigger job because chances are the paint has changed colour a bit and you have to really play to get a nice even job again (not the case with shellac which just blends right into the old stuff again). They even make MinWax markers you can use to fix any deep scratches and it's no harder than using any felt tip marker, then the shellac with the q-tip, and you are as good as new again. Five minutes and it's done no sanding, no dust, no hassle.
It also doesn't show fingerprints etc. like a white paint will that is for absolute certain. Maintenance is much less in other words and you will always find people who will go 'oooh ahhh' seeing original wood. Don't forget, once you paint it, you must always paint it. So after a few years, there goes another coat and so on and so on until you have so many coats you have to now strip it all off of lose the detail of that wood. If you've never painted before I can tell you trim is the worst of it all and having to do it more than doubles the work of painting a room (not to mention extra costs).
For sure, if you don't plan on being in that house for life, consider you are killing a huge selling feature if you paint that wood. It's been left for so long you really need to decide if it's truly what you want because this will make a difference to the value and resale of your house (perhaps not in dollars as much as time on the market). For sure there are always buyers like me out there who will kill to get a house that has kept it's character and I know when I've bought, the painted trim ones go down in desirability.
Please, you really need to live in that house a while before you decide because this is a big deal in an older house if there is a lot of original trim. Chances are if you want white, clean, open spaces you should have probably bought a different era (usually 1920 houses don't fit that description since they are usually more the warm, cozy type feel). Please, really consider what appealled when you purchased that house. I've seen so many old houses ruined (IMO) by folks who go blowing down walls and sterilizing the interiors, painting original trim out, that it's just a crying shame.
What I will tell you is wood trim doesn't look all that good next to white walls if you want a spacious look. It's too contrasty and makes for brown lines running all over the place that visually cuts the space up. If you can wrap you head around it, have a look at houses that have painted the walls closer to the tones of the wood (doesn't have to be dark although boy is that stunning when it's done right) but when you pick the right colour the wood just becomes a beautiful accent and visually blends in. This is when you really need to look at that wood and figure out what colour it is (some is reddish, some more yellow for instance) and test paints that work with that colour.
Hello jshahin,
H&H style editor Michael Penney struggled with the same dilemma! Several editors here at the mag advised him to paint it out white, but he decided to leave much of the moulding au naturel. See the gallery for his tips on balancing the warm wood tones with furniture:
http://houseandhome.com/design/photo-gallery-michael-penneys-new-house
And watch the video tour through his living/dining room to see the end result. Even though he left the wood as is, it looks light and fresh!
http://houseandhome.com/tv/segment/michael-penneys-living-dining-room
So I guess painting it out white isn't always the only option :)
Good luck!
Gwen McAuley (gmcauley at hhmedia.com)
I can see thew merit to painting them white - IF, the rest of the room is left natural and the floors are wood, the doors are wood and maybe even the windows.
Yes I think you can have too much wood and the white offers a visual relief and brightens the room. However that only works for me if you are trying to lessen the amount of wood that is there.