Door Refinishing — Shaw
Door refinishing in Shaw.
Shaw's foursquares and bungalows were built from 1900 to 1930 with old-growth Douglas fir as the standard building material. The doors in these homes are worth every effort to restore — the wood underneath the paint is still excellent.
Shaw's foursquares and bungalows — and the wood that built them
Shaw is one of St. Louis's most architecturally coherent neighborhoods — a grid of American Foursquares, Craftsman bungalows, and modest Colonial Revivals developed from about 1900 through the late 1920s. These homes were built for working and middle-class families during a period when craftsmanship was expected as a baseline, not an upgrade.
The dominant wood in Shaw's residential construction was old-growth Douglas fir. Fir was the workhorse species of the American Craftsman movement — straight grain, predictable finishing behavior, good dimensional stability. At the time Shaw was built, the fir coming out of Pacific Northwest mills was old-growth: trees that had been growing for 200 to 400 years, producing wood with eight to twelve growth rings per inch. Compare that to modern construction fir, which might have two or three rings per inch, and the difference in density and hardness is dramatic.
That old-growth fir is why the doors in Shaw's bungalows and foursquares are worth restoring rather than replacing. A 1915 fir front door that's been painted over several times still has structurally excellent wood. Strip the accumulated finish, address any surface damage, and what you find underneath is tight-grained, dense, beautiful lumber that holds a finish better than anything you could install new.
We hand-strip every door. No chemical dipping — dip tanks raise the grain in fir specifically, and the water-based chemicals used in most dipping operations swell the wood and disrupt the flat-sawn grain pattern that makes old fir distinctive. Hand stripping preserves the surface integrity and produces the result the wood deserves.
Door work we do most in Shaw
Bungalow and foursquare front doors
Shaw front doors typically run a bit smaller in scale than the Victorian brownstones of the CWE — Craftsman paneling, often with a divided-lite glass panel in the upper third. These are usually fir, occasionally oak, and often have original hardware — thumb latches, mortise locksets, cast escutcheons — that we work around carefully. We remove the door, strip and refinish in our shop, and rehang it. The hardware stays in place unless you want it replaced.
Interior door sets
Shaw bungalows and foursquares typically have matching interior doors throughout — two- to four-panel fir or oak doors in every opening. When these have been painted, the paint usually encompasses the door, casing, and frame together, so stripping one door often means staining and finishing decisions that affect the whole room. We scope interior door projects with the full visual context in mind.
Painted-over stained doors
This is the most common scenario we encounter in Shaw: a door that was originally stained and finished is now under three or four layers of paint applied by subsequent owners. The wood underneath is almost always in better condition than expected. We strip it, assess the surface, and give you the choice of returning it to a stained finish or maintaining a painted look with proper prep and paint.
Lead paint in Shaw homes — handled correctly
Shaw homes were built from 1900 through the 1920s — all well before lead was banned from residential paint in 1978. The paint on your doors almost certainly contains lead. This isn't a worst-case assumption; it's the realistic baseline for this era of construction.
Sue Wheeler is an EPA Certified Lead Removal. Under EPA RRP regulations, any refinishing work disturbing painted surfaces in a pre-1978 home must be performed by a certified contractor. She's been certified since the regulations came into effect. Her process includes containment, HEPA filtration, wet methods to minimize dust, and documented cleanup — producing a completion record for your property file.
Owner-operated since 1989
Wood Refinishing by Sue Wheeler, LLC has been in business since 1989 — 36 years of work in St. Louis's historic neighborhoods, including Shaw, from the beginning. Sue Wheeler owns the company, does the estimates, and does the work. There's no crew of rotating subcontractors, no project manager between you and the person doing the job.
When she comes out for an estimate, she'll tell you what's under the finish on your doors, whether it's worth a full strip or a maintenance coat, what the EPA requirements are for your home, and exactly what the project will cost. No obligation, no upsell.
Common questions
Do you refinish doors in Shaw?
Yes. The foursquares and bungalows here have original fir and oak doors that are excellent candidates for hand-strip refinishing. We work in Shaw regularly. Call (314) 367-6054 for a free in-person estimate.
What types of doors are common in Shaw homes?
Front doors are typically old-growth Douglas fir in Craftsman paneling, sometimes with divided-lite glass panels. Interior doors are usually matching fir or oak in two- to four-panel configurations. The old-growth wood in these homes is denser and tighter-grained than anything available new.
My Shaw bungalow front door has been painted multiple times. Can it still be refinished?
Almost always, yes. Multiple layers of paint — even five or six applications over a century — can be hand-stripped from old-growth fir. The wood underneath is typically in better condition than you'd expect. We'll assess the door in person and tell you exactly what you have before any work begins.
Let's talk about your Shaw doors.
Free estimate. No obligation. Sue answers every call personally — (314) 367-6054.