Why can the not be sanded and re stained?

Our contractor said his sub said we will be mad at the results. He has too much pride to do it.

Or is just lazy. I would have someone else look at it. It does not look that bad to me, but I am not there either. It can certainly be painted with proper prep but IMO, it can be re stained to look original.

they don't look too bad to me either. is it just at the bottom? One possibility is a brass plate at the bottom of each door to hid the damage.

Can you post some closer, well-focused pix of just the bottom 1/3?!

They look pretty beat-up to me.
Are they solid/real wood?
If they're just a veneer, paint them.
The key here will obviously be some prep!!!

Faron

I think it depends on what kind of stain you use. I used gel stain over paint and it came out looking like wood. Here you've already got an exposed wood surface to work with so I don't see how it would be that bad.

But you aren't going to get a paint to look like wood. If you want to paint, then go with a nice saturated color like a deep green and they'd look great, esp with that glass.

quote"But you aren't going to get a paint to look like wood."

Sure you can, it's done all the time. I would not do it, as I don't like it but it certainly is done.

Haha, that 'too much pride to do it' attitude cracks me up. This means he knows it may not look perfect unless you do a full strip and re-stain and just doesn't want to mess with it. But I don't think it's accurate to say that they are too weathered to fix....it's worth a try. What you do is some light sanding on the weathered areas and then get a stain that is close in color to the current stain and sort of blend it in. Sometimes this looks ok and sometimes it doesn't. Most people are okay with giving it a try at least....that's better than painting the thing for sure.