Antique Doors- Protection?

[Carroll Courtney]

Guys I am planning to purchase some old say 1950 or 60's interior doors. The ones that has old white paint that may have pealing paint,and it may have the cracks all over it or krackle paint. All I want to do is clean the dust and dirt off them,and break off the pealing paint so that I can I guess stabilize the door. I was thinking about just using a water base clear finish satin or semi satin like Minwax. But as old as what these doors are,the paint may be oil base paint. So I don't know what to use,if anything. Any ideals on how to treat old antique interior painted doors?

[Tom M King]

Not only likely to be oil based, but also have lead in it.

[Jim Becker]

You can put waterborne products over oli based finishes with proper preparation. But Tom is correct that if these are old doors, you need to be very careful about lead paint when scraping off loose materials. I'm dealing with that "as we speak" in a small renovation project, only using scraping (no sanding) and then encapsulation with new primer and paint.

[Carroll Courtney]

Thanks guys for the heads up on lead,this type of project is new to me so out of my comfort zone

[Tom M King]

You can buy the little lead test kits at hardware, and box stores. Just remember that any you breathe in, never comes back out.

[Carroll Courtney]

You can buy the little lead test kits at hardware, and box stores. Just remember that any you breathe in, never comes back out.

Tom never thought of it that way, good point and good way for me to remember.