I work with a high end builder in north texas and we are currently finishing up a 1.5 mil home. It was a blast! Lots of adzing oak beams and custom woodworking. Great client as well. The theme of the house is very “timber-frame” even though it is not. Lots of real wood. Including the doors. Made from Alder the are paneled doors. Beautiful! Arch top. To make them even nicer, we hired a guy from dallas to distress them and WOW! they look like they came out of the Alamo. Looks like a milllion hands have opened and closed them over 100 years. Turned out great! After the doors were hung and trimmed and painted the AC guys came and cranked on the heat. You can guesds what happened. We all knew there was going to be some shrinkage in the woodwork, especially the oak beams. 13 of the 26 doors have warped diagonally. 4 of those doors are double pocket doors that MUST meet together when closed. Anyway..this is a stumper for me because, though I am just one of the carps on the job, I would like to offer some suggestions to my boss. He happens to be a old world carpenter from England and highly intelligent. He might be pondering this as well. Probably already has a solution. But I still want to know for myself.
I can think of probably three ways that might work, steaming, cut thjoint and reglue, or perhaps forcing re srfacing them flat. I wonder what they will do when summer comes and the Humidity rises. Will they go back to original. That would be a prob if we do anything.
Thanks for the suggestions
Replies
Am I missing something here?
You have alder doors…..you paid to have them distressed and then they were "painted". ???
Is this what you intended to say or do you mean they were "finished" with clear coats?
What product(s) were used and in what order? (whether painted or clear coated)
Can we assume these doors have solid wood panels? If they warped on you, I'm betting so….and I'll bet those panels are plain-sawn as opposed to quarter-sawn.
There's a number of reasons why you could literally expect this to happen if the doors have plain-sawn solid wood panels and the doors have been in a closed position while the RH has changed in the house.
They may straighten out again if you can expose the backsides to the same RH levels for a while……..and will stand a better chance of remaining straight if you can devise permanent venting for the cabinets……or the doors are opened and closed frequently enough during changes in the home's RH.
Following Goldhillers theory, you might want to just let things "settle" for a while and see if they don't straighten out as they stabilize. I think I would try that before I started trying fixes. Hopefully, the homeowner knows about wood and temperature and humidity. - lol
Cuttawood, Even kiln dried pocket doors can warp. Old timers used recessed tracks below and across the floor under the doors.
In The bottoms of each door were two recessed Sheaves
that rode along the tracks.
Since the doors were top hung, the only function
of the sheaves and runners was to keep the doors
aligned at the closing center line.
As per the hinged doors, they can be coaxed to fit
the door stops with a little juditious shimming
(After the doors have stabilized to the ambient humidity)
Steinmetz
Edited 1/8/2005 11:09 pm ET by steinmetz
up here in ontario if that happened after a serious distressing I would call them "rustic"
did a rush job for a customer the other day spraying a texture ceiling in a basement with the result that the popcorn finish was not all equal but the pattern was consistent , told the customer it was the " random pattern look ) that everybodys looking for & I got the check .
The recent weather in north Texas had to play hell with the wood. Right before xmas DFW went from cold ultra-dry to 1 1/2 weeks of 70-80 degrees with 80% humidity to match, then back to cold/dry and now we are back in the 70's.
Uneven finishing with two different types of finishes on opposite faces of the doors, combined with a sudden very large change in humidity, caused by the heating and AC being turned on for the first time, could account for the problem. If that is the case, letting air get to both sides of the doors by leaving closets and cabinets open will probably lead to the doors flattening out over a week or two as the moisture levels in the doors even out.
If the doors were poorly made in terms of grain orientation and moisture content of the frame components at the time of construction, then the warpage is permanent but will change in degree as the moisture content of the air goes from higher to lower and back again with seasonal changes in the environment. If this is the cause, then the builder or architect will need to have a serious talk with the outfit that made the doors, because they will probably need to be replaced. There is no practical repair for choosing the wrong wood with the wrong moisture content especially once the doors have been finished.
My gut level instinct is that the second case, poor construction, is the primary problem and there will be a lot of screaming and yelling before it is resolved.
John W.
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