Interior Home Maintenance: How to Properly Care for your Doors

Your interior doors are an important part of your home that often gets overlooked. Most homeowners don’t give the care and maintenance of their doors a second thought. After all, your inside doors don’t experience the same abuse as entryway doors, right? This couldn’t be further from the truth. The doors inside your home can be subjected to extreme conditions. Maybe not the same as exterior doors, but damaging nonetheless. Thankfully, the proper care and maintenance, you can ensure the doors inside your home look just as good as they did the first day they were installed.

Cleaning the Doors

Regularly cleaning your inside doors is essential to its proper care. However, using the wrong technique or tools can cause more harm than good. If, however, you consider the finish or stain of the door before cleaning, you will help preserve the door. A good general rule of thumb is to use a diluted mild cleaning product to clean doors, such as ETO doors. You should also test the cleaning solution on a small area of the door first. If there is no negative reaction, continue using the cleaning solution, starting from the top and working your way down. If the door is wood, consider using a polish or wax to give it a nice glow. Oil soap diluted with warm water works well to clean wooden or veneer doors, while painted doors can be cleaned with a few squirts of gentle dish soap mixed into warm water. Avoid using abrasive or harsh cleaners, like ammonia or bleach.

Regular Maintenance

Along with proper cleaning, you should regularly inspect your inside doors and look for any chips or scuffs. If you find any damage, repair as soon as possible to help prevent the damage from getting worse. Wipe away dust around molding and the base and lubricate noisy hinges.

Bathroom Doors

Bathroom doors have to deal with different problems than the other doors inside your home. The big obstacle being mold. Bathrooms are humid areas, which makes a great breeding ground for fungal growth. Because of this, you must be diligent in your look out for mold and milder. Whenever you find it on the bathroom door, whip it with a clean dampened in diluted vinegar. Furthermore, avoid hanging wet towels on the door as this will increase the chance of fungal growth.