One of the projects that had been on my to-do list for way too long was repainting the front door of our house. I had a pint of colour match paint made up over two years ago but it's easy to find better things to do. The door is constructed of steel with a glass window in the top half. The window trim was in rough shape so part of the plan was to repair it. As I began stripping the door it became clear to me that repairing the exterior side of the window trim would not be feasible. There was no information on the door to identify the manufacturer so sourcing the appropriate plastic trim was not an option. As I would be keeping the interior trim and there was matching trim on windows on either side of the door I decided to replicate the original trim with wood. I found a piece of rough cut oak that I was able to mill down to one and a half inch square. The door was an inch and a half thick and the window was half an inch thick so the first step was to cut two rabbets to match, a rib of wood was left between the rabbets to meet the interior trim at half the door thickness.
The pieces were cut to length with mitered corners to fit the window frame. I cut them a little long and test fit them. As they were matching up with extruded plastic posts to screw them to the interior trim the fit needed to be precise.
The next step was to try and match the profile of the original trim. This required multiple passes over a variety of router bits on the router table. I did not have a router table so I made one out of the right extension of my table saw. A combination of straight bits, roundover bits, and cove bits were used. All four pieces were passed through each router table setup to ensure consistency. Towards the end of the routing process much of the supporting wood had been removed and I was forced to improvise a support system to stabalise the trim as I passed it over the router table.
The trim came together perfectly and was as close a match to the original profile that I could have asked for.
