Interior doors looking shabby? Here’s how to treat them

The windows and doors inside your home can be prone to increasing unsightliness over time, whether they are period doors in classic wood or comprise the more contemporary-looking material of aluminium.

Exactly how you should rectify aesthetic shabbiness in your doors can depend on the precise nature of the problem and the material of which each door mainly consists. Here are a few pointers for treating doors as a way of meaningfully improving their appearance.

Why must waning timber doors be urgently treated?

If your home is particularly old, you might be familiar with the problem of flaking paint on timber doors. Sadly, this isn’t just a cosmetic issue, as timber left bare can easily swell or rot. This, in turn, will cause sashes to stick and draughts to enter gaps that emerge in the door.

These problems will only worsen if they remain neglected, making repairs harder and costlier. Therefore, it’s beneficial to nip these issues in the bud as they initially become evident.

Tread carefully if the door requires a new coat of paint

Real Homes advises that you maintain a wooden door by regularly inspecting it and applying some paint as soon as this door apparently needs it. However, before layering the fresh coat, you should remove any lingering loose paint, albeit carefully if you put hot air guns to this purpose. Otherwise, the heat could crack the glass, giving you something new to fix.

To ensure that you can prime and finish each door’s edges – including the bottom edge – properly, it’s a good idea to detach that door from its hinges first. Doing this can prevent the wood from becoming overly moist and swelling.

Tips for cleaning aluminium doors

Aluminium doors can accumulate dirt if left untouched by a cleaner’s hands for a long time. This raises the obvious question of how you should clean these doors, but it can be a relatively easy task provided you start cleaning each door frame from the top before working downwards.

Cleanipedia outlines several key steps for cleaning aluminium frames. If the frames are internal, you won’t need to hose them down with water. However, you should still use a detergent solution or special aluminium cleaner to scrub them before rinsing.

Then, you should proceed with using steel wool and water to polish those frames. If you still see that oxide has built up on the door frames, get in touch with a professional aluminium cleaner.

Do you still need new doors?

If the successive stages detailed above give you the impression that cleaning aluminium doors is straightforward, you would be right on that point. Even cleaning such doors on the outside can be fairly straightforward, which adds to the reasons to consider fitting such doors if you lack them.

Aluminium doors are available from Bifold Shop, which is based in Gloucestershire but capable of supplying and installing these products anywhere in the UK. By contacting the company by phone on 0808 159 4864, you can learn more about the firm’s product range.