Panel Doors - With Cracks And Joints? Question Of The Month

Wooden doors in an old building have their charm. There are often elaborately crafted panel doors with impressive dimensions. If the painter is asked to re-coat these doors as part of a renovation or refurbishment, caution is advised.

The problem lies in the fact that solid wood "works" by swelling and shrinking. The ambient climate has a direct impact on this material. A corresponding moisture content is established in the wood.

The order for the painter could be as follows: rework the panel doors, remove the old coating, prime them etc. To do this, the painter decides to take the doors with him into his workshop. At the construction site, work is also carried out with which a lot of water is introduced, such as B. Masonry and plastering. That sounds like normal workflows and does not seem to be of any further concern at first. Despite great care and professional quality work, complaints can arise later. Because at the beginning of the heating season, joints appear on the wooden filling doors. How can that be?

The wood has absorbed some moisture on the construction site and has swelled. The doors were painted. Now the heating season comes and the wood dries. This leads to the shrinking of the wood and the described cracks arise. The horror of the customers is correspondingly great.

The dilemma: there is practically nothing that can be done about it. The change in moisture in the wood is inevitably accompanied by swelling and shrinking. In addition, it is usually the case that wood fillings are not glued and sit "loose" in the filling frame, so to speak. During the heating season, all elements change to a rather dry state. So it happens that the described cracks can occur with carefully machined doors with a time offset of months. The door linings are mostly not affected.

Conclusion: Even if the connection area between the door panel and the panel opening is professionally retrofitted with elastic seals, you are not completely immune. If these areas remain steady despite the change in moisture, the movement of the wood will probably have an effect in a weaker section of the door. In extreme cases, cracks can appear in the filling along a wood fiber.