How-To
Finishing a Raised Panel
Avoid drips and pools of finish by brushing the components in a specific order.
Oct 25, 2005
Raised panels have many surface levels and edges. The nooks and crannies they create are traps for drips and unwanted pooling of the finish. In this video, author, artist, and professional finisher David Sorg demonstrates some methods for minimizing these annoyances for raised panels. The techniques apply to most other projects as well.
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Comments
I have been stripping and painting raised panel doors as I restore my house. I used to use the same painting order, but I do them in a fraction of the time now, with a different order. I have a 3" paint roller, and I buy 9" black-foam rollers. I cut them into thirds.
Lay the paint first onto the long edges (I never paint the ends unless it is an exposed top). Draw it off with a brush, and with a rag on your finger, pull it off the bottom of the door... it always leaves a bit of a ridge along the edge.
Next, lay the paint onto the panel with the roller. Tilt it up to lay paint into those tapered areas. Load up a GOOD 2" brush (I've moved to Wooster, even over a Purdy) and fill in the tapered edges. Be light at the corners. Use the same brush, now NOT loaded, to pull out the foam tracks all over. Then go back to the tapered ends (short length). Make sure the corners are clean/no globs, and pull the paint up onto the panel (kinda/sorta... the desire is to put paint tracks in the right direction... with the grain). Then do a last light pull if you have to on the panels, to erase any slop onto them from that last step. Then roller the rails and stiles, draw them with the brush. Check again for globby corners. This cuts the time to paint a raised panel door to about 1/4 of what a brush does, and it gives a superior coverage... very uniform, and without color variations.
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