Busy weekend

[TonyinNYC]

I spent the weekend sanding and the staining my garage door. It is a 1.5 car garage so it's a big door. The wood itself looked like cedar in color, but is did not smell like cedar. Which leads me to believe it might be redwood. The garage door is original to the house, so it is from 1950 give or take. Here is a pic:


Every single piece of the door except for one 12" X 3" piece is quarter sawn. If this door ever comes down and is replaced, I will save the wood and make soundboards out of it! Here is a "before" pic. I have not taken the "after" pic yet since I finished painting last night at 8:00PM and the light was fading. "After" pics to come later today.

[ken cierp]

East coast -- My guess "Douglas Fir" which is an excellent tone wood in its own right

[TonyinNYC]

Doug Fir, eh? I don't know much about wood identification so all of my identification knowledge comes from the pile of spruce, cedar and redwood in my wood stash. I do know that if the door had been made from Brazilian Rosewood, I could ID that!!
I did not know Doug fir was so red inside. Is it tight grained as well? This stuff if very tight grained. Most of it anyway. Would it have a smell? I got no smell from this wood even though I had to sand pretty deep to fix the mistakes my brother in law made when he sanded it. The sander he used had a messed up corner so the entire surface of the garage was covered in small circular scratches where the sander had dug in. Wonderful. It probably added two hours to my sanding because I had to sand out the scratches instead of sanding a flat surface to remove the old finish he put on.
It seemed odd to me that all of the wood was quartered except for the one small piece.
Thanks for the info Ken. I appreciate knowing what my place is made from. I was able to identify the brick-ish looking stuff as "bricks" but I got tripped up on the wood ID!! It was really nice looking. I wish my wife had not made me stain it black. I was about to argue that choice when it occurred to me my time would be better spent slamming my head in a door than to try to change her mind!

[ken cierp]

It could very well be Redwood or even Western Red Cedar (it looses the fragrance after time) -- both were very popular for wood siding. I am thinking region and timing -- how old is the door/house? Fir was a prime construction material for a longtime in the 40's and 50's and early 60's -- wild grain slab cut Douglas Fir plywood was used to make "everything" riff and quarter for furinishings. And DF 2 by's were common and preferred over spruce and other white woods.

[TonyinNYC]

Whatever it was, it was a shame to stain it black.

[Tim Benware]

I would bet -Redwood. When I lived in NY with my dad we had it on the front of our house and we heat removed it to restore it to natural wood (had to peel all that white paint off). Anyway, I remember it well. The house was built in the 50's and the wood looked just like yours.

[TonyinNYC]

Well it's blackwood now. I hated doing it, but the wife wanted it and my shop is in there, so to keep the peace and get back to work INSIDE the garage, I stained it.


Now I need to replace the rotted wood at the bottom of the small door and paint the white parts white again and I will be done. In the meantime, my evenings are still free to play in the garage.