Andrew Yeckel > Stories > Storm door restoration

Restoring an old wooden storm door

The north side of our house is 3 feet from the property line with our neighbor. There is a cement walkway on our side and a hedge of lilac bushes on our neighbor's side. There is little reason to go there, which makes it easy to ignore problems on that side of the house, like the peeling paint on this storm door, which enters our basement stairwell.

This door is original to the house, built in 1908. It is a very sturdy door, but was already in poor condition when we bought the house in 1995. We haven't touched it since then. Areas of rot had formed on the threshold and bottom of the door, leaving large gaps that compromised the performance of the door during winter.

The door has a removable insert, shown here on sawhorses in the garage. Behind it, leaning against the wall, is the outer frame of the door.

I've scraped the paint in these pictures, but still have a long way to go at this point. After stripping and sanding, I applied wood hardener to areas that were soft and rotten, and I used plastic wood filler to repair gouges. Then I painted the door and threshold in a lovely shade of yellow.

         

What a change! I am particularly happy with the threshold.

It was quite a lot of work to remove the many layers of paint that had accumulated over the previous century, but I think it was well worth it. Now sometimes I visit that side of the house just to admire the restoration of this door.