Door application with relief frames

We want to renew this old door: it is an oversized door, instead of replacing it it was cheaper to cover it.

This door has frames on the inside of the face and also on the outside edge.

Let’s take the door apart. We will remove the top lock and the handle.

Here’s what we need: a light wood effect film (WD-044), an adhesion promoter (Magnum Primer) and as usual a heat gun, a spatula and a cutter.

The first thing to do is to clean the door. It is necessary to remove every single imperfection and impurities present on the surface.

We fill the parts that do not interest us, in our case the upper lock. The grout must be allowed to dry, then we will have to sand the area, in order to obtain a smooth and homogeneous surface for the subsequent application.

In this case, instead of using a single vinyl as wide as the whole door, we decided to cut strips to apply on each segment of the frames and on the facade. This type of application is easier and leads to a better result, especially if the film used has a texture.

First, however, with our soaked pad we go to pass the primer on the points of greatest tension, in this case the frames.
We should wait about 5 minutes for it to dry completely. When wet it does not have the same adhesion power.

We position the strips in the center of the frame, and by heating them with the heat gun or a hairdryer, we go to apply them along all the grooves, with the help of the spatula.

Once the first strip has been applied, we are going to trim and cut along the edge.
Using our cutter, we are going to engrave the film NOT exactly on the corner, at 45 °, but we will leave some abundance to guarantee the subsequent overlap.

Let’s now move on to apply the next strip. As before, we heat the film with the heat gun or the hairdryer, we go to shape along the grooves and, once applied, with the cutter we engrave in this case perfectly at 45 °. This film will surmount the abundant piece of the previous one.

Here is the final result of the angle. It is better noticeable that the film we applied previously remains below, the one just applied remains above, cut at 45 °. Everything else is film in abundance which we will then remove.

We proceed in the same way for all the frames, using the same technique. This is the provisional result of the interior frames:

Let’s move on to cutting and removing the excess film. We can use our spatula as a thickness when cutting, in this way we will create a margin that we will need for the overlap of the central part.
Proceeding calmly, we remove the excess film.

Let’s proceed with the application of the boss, or part inside the frame.
In this case we used 60cm film and cut it perfectly to size.

Once the application on the central parts is complete, we will use the primer on the frame on the outer edge again. We repeat the same procedure for the entire perimeter.

Now let’s proceed with applying the rest of the face, always using the striping technique.

When we cut the sides of this central band, it is better to leave a couple of millimeters of abundance, so that we can make a small overlap with the side bands.

We complete the application on the missing parts.

This is the result of the facade (including the frames and the new handle):

This is the video tutorial (in italian):