Desert Outdoor Finish P.1

An outdoor finish they can endure a hot Arizona Summer this is definitely a case of less is more.

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So, here is my mom’s front door. It is a very typical door that you would find here in Arizona. It is solid alder, it is beautiful, it had a really nice finish on it and it is held up pretty well, it is about two years old now. And I did do the original finish on this.

Now, the Arizona weather here is so dry and it is so hot. The sun bits on these things that you can not treat it the same way you might normally try to treat furniture in other climates.

Nothing really holds up to this environment. So because you know that, kind of like a concept behind a work bench and behind the cutting board you know that it is not going to withstand the beating that is going to be subjected to.

So you have to sort of work around it and figure out what the best way the most reparable, yet protected finish that you could apply. So, the trick here is to actually do a oil varnish blend and instead of trying to coat this thing with layers and layers of polyurethane that are just going to dry and crack and become a major repair issue later.

I apply light coats of an oil varnish blend and I do not use just a regular varnish I use a very high quality marine varnish to do that and one it requires me to do is lightly sand and refresh the store every couple of years, but that is a small price to pay for a beautiful looking door that is well protected and does not have a big goopy layer of spar varnish on it or something.

So, it is definitely my preferred finish for this type of climate and I actually think it would work in kind of few climates so, the first step here is the sort of analyze the door, look at what we are dealing with and see if there is anything that needs major repair work that needs to be done. Overhaul for two years, technically I really should be doing this every year but I am a little bit lazy.

So, after two years the door is in pretty darn good shape considering the inside of the door is perfect, no problems there, but this is the side that gets all the exposure to the elements. Down at the bottom has definitely suffered a little bit more were than the top and I am assuming it is just dirt, dust, debris, things that are hitting that when the wind blows and probably the sun heats it a little bit because of the way the over head area is structured here that some of sun can still get down to the bottom.

So, a little bit of work to do and we start with the light sanding and then apply a single coat, see where we go from there. We might need to do two coats but one is probably going to be enough for now. So, let us head back to the shop. Let us get our varnish together and I will show you the special spagnola blend that I am going to put together for this.

You know when I first moved to Arizona I had a couple of conversations with some local contractors and asked them what they usually did for the front doors of homes here that had this big beautiful solid wood doors and in most cases the ones that had enough experience in the industry and had been around long enough to see what happens a few years later. They all recommended using boiled linseed oil alone, well not all of them recommended that, some just wanted to slap on polyurethane and never look back. But the result of that again is that dried cracking peeling surface that just going to be a major problem down the road.

So that ones that learn their lessons said “Alright, well let us just used boiled linseed oil it makes the door look finished, gives it that darker color.” I guess maybe a little bit protection, but the primary thing was that is a renewable and then every year you could just recoat it with this boiled linseed oil.

The problem I had with that it really does not offer much protection at all. But fortunately from what we know of finishing, we can make an oil varnish blend, that maybe a little heavy on the boiled linseed oil side, but still give us a little bit of protection that we would not otherwise get if we went with oil alone.

So, I use someone else’s experience and just kind of modified it with what I know about finishing and after a couple of years of observing a few of the doors that we have on our homes, I am really happy with the results and I think that definitely is the way to go. I was able to stretch two years out of what should have been done after a year for just using oil alone. And again as we know, oils do not really offer a whole lot of protection.

So, here is what we are dealing with. I have got some naphtha because I wanted to flush off quickly and I am not taking the door down. I am finishing it, right there on the hinges and I want to make sure that it starts to dry quickly. Boiled linseed oil, no tricks there and then there is the stuff.

Now, when you select your varnish for this you could probably use any varnish you want. I really like to use a marine varnish. We are not talking to stuff that is available at the Big Box Store. That is kind of popo. The stuff that I am talking about is really only available at Marines Supplies Stores and this is a super high quality UV resistant varnish that a lot of this guys and the Marine Industry will swear by. This material is called Epiphanes and I put a link up to where I pick this up back. I usually can only find it online, ugly enough there is not many Marines Stores and Phoenix any who, this stuff, really good. So this is going to be service our varnish component. So, here we go and be sure you have a mixture.

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Now most oil varnish blends that we use for our typical furniture are going to be a one part each of an oil like boiled linseed oil or tung oil, a thinner like naphtha or mineral spirits and then a varnish. It is usually it is one third, one third, one third. Now I am actually get change that quite of it here because I want to be heavy on the boiled linseed oil and light on the varnish. Okay, so we will go with equal parts, boiled linseed oil, this not an exact signs, I am just using this cup for reference. So, equal parts boiled linseed oil and naphtha.


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