Door Refinishing — Maplewood
Door refinishing in Maplewood.
Maplewood's working-family bungalows and cottages were built from the same old-growth Douglas fir as their grander neighbors in other St. Louis neighborhoods. The doors look modest. The wood is excellent — and worth bringing back.
What makes Maplewood door refinishing different
Maplewood was built for working families in the early 1900s — compact lots, cottages and bungalows sized for practicality, and woodwork that was unpretentious in design but not in material. The builders who constructed Maplewood in the 1900s and 1910s were using the same lumber supply as everyone else in St. Louis: old- growth Douglas fir from Pacific Northwest mills, with growth rings so tight — eight to twelve per inch — that the wood is essentially a different material from anything sold as fir today.
The doors in Maplewood's bungalows and cottages are simpler in profile than those in Central West End Victorians or Lafayette Square row houses. Two-panel and four-panel configurations, modest scale, workman's hardware. But the wood itself is identical in quality. A Maplewood cottage front door from 1915 and a CWE townhouse entry door from the same year came from the same forests and the same mills. The difference is in the ornament, not the material.
That matters for refinishing because the wood's behavior under stripping, staining, and finishing is determined by its age and growth density — not by the design of the door. Old-growth fir strips predictably, holds stain evenly, and finishes beautifully. Maplewood doors do all of that. They're also frequently still in their original openings, with original hardware, which means the entire door-and-frame assembly has aged together.
Maplewood has a strong renovation culture — current owners are committed to the neighborhood's original character and actively restoring rather than replacing. We see that in the kinds of projects we get called for here: front doors that owners want to restore to natural wood rather than repaint, interior door sets that need to match restored trim, and occasionally pocket doors that have been painted shut for decades.
Door work we do most in Maplewood
Cottage and bungalow front doors
Maplewood front doors are typically simple paneled fir — modest in scale, often painted many times over since original installation. We remove the door, strip every layer of accumulated paint in our shop, assess the wood, and return a finished door that reflects the honest character of the house. The board-up method means no stripping work in your entryway and a clean, weather-tight opening while we work.
Interior door sets in fir
Maplewood cottages typically have two-panel and four-panel interior doors throughout in the same old-growth fir as the front door. When owners are restoring a room, they often want the interior doors to match — stripped to natural wood and finished consistently with the trim. We scope interior door projects to account for the full visual context of the room, not just one door in isolation.
Pocket doors
Some of Maplewood's larger floor plans include pocket doors between the living and dining rooms — an original feature that gets painted over and eventually stuck in the wall pocket for years. We can strip and refinish pocket doors in place or remove them from the pocket for shop work, depending on the installation and condition of the hardware.
Painted-over stained originals
The most common situation we find in Maplewood: a door that was originally stained dark is now under three or four layers of white paint. Previous owners painted rather than stripped; the wood underneath is almost always in better condition than anyone expects. We give you the honest assessment in person — what's there, what it will look like, and whether refinishing makes sense for your specific door.
Lead paint in Maplewood homes — handled correctly
Maplewood's housing stock was built entirely before 1978, when lead was banned from residential paint. Every layer of paint on your doors — and there may be many — should be treated as lead-bearing until tested. This isn't a precautionary overstatement; it's the accurate default for any pre-1978 home.
Sue Wheeler is an EPA Certified Lead Removal contractor. Under EPA RRP regulations, disturbing painted surfaces in pre-1978 homes requires a certified contractor with documented process controls. Her method includes full containment, HEPA filtration, wet stripping to minimize airborne dust, and documented cleanup — and she produces a completion record for your property file when the work is done.
"We bought our Maplewood cottage knowing the woodwork needed work. Sue stripped and refinished the front door and all five interior doors. The fir underneath was gorgeous — tight grain, warm color. We never would have guessed what was hiding under all that white paint. The whole house feels different now."
— Homeowner, Sutton Ave., Maplewood
Common questions
Do you refinish doors in Maplewood?
Yes. Maplewood is a neighborhood we work in regularly. The bungalows and cottages here have original old-growth fir doors that are excellent candidates for hand-strip refinishing. Call (314) 367-6054 for a free in-person estimate.
My Maplewood cottage front door has been painted many times — is the original wood worth uncovering?
Almost always, yes. Old-growth Douglas fir is dense enough that it survives decades of paint in good condition. We assess every door in person and tell you exactly what's underneath before any work begins. No obligation.
How do you refinish interior doors in a small Maplewood home?
We remove each door and do all stripping and finishing in our shop, not in your home. That means no chemical exposure or dust in your living space. Doors are returned and rehung when the finish has fully cured.
Let's talk about your Maplewood doors.
Free estimate. No obligation. Sue answers every call personally — (314) 367-6054.