Repair and prevent wood rot with these smart tips

Do you want to paint or stain wood? Then there is one important requirement: the wood must be healthy. But what if your wood suffers from wood rot? Can you repair wood rot at all or does all the wood have to be replaced?

These are one of the many questions surrounding this topic, to which you will fortunately get all the answers in this blog post. And rest assured, there are tools to save your wood. So read through our smart tips and become a real wood doctor in no time.

How do you recognise wood rot?

On natural wood that has not been painted, you can easily detect wood rot because your wood is discoloured by moisture. Thus, your wood may show light-grey spots, darken or in some cases simply turn completely black.

But how exactly do you recognise wood rot on painted surfaces such as wooden windows, doors or window sills? Often, wood rot is accompanied by wood softening. So your wood may have developed weak spots due to moisture. Your paint may also be flaking off, showing air bubbles or cracks. Very often, this is due to a moisture problem which eventually results in wood rot and mould.

Repairing wood rot, is it possible?

Yes, wood rot can be treated and it's not the hardest job in the world. That's already a load off your mind right? We briefly list the steps for you.

Step 1: Remove any mould

Mould on wood can easily be removed using ammonia. You dilute the ammonia with water as indicated on the packaging. You simply fill this into a plant sprayer, for example, and moisten the surface with mould. You should see results after just a few minutes. Is the mould still not completely gone? Then just do it again.

Step 1: Remove any mould

Because the bristles of older paint brushes have sometimes become hard and this makes you more likely to get brush smudges. Therefore, it is very important to go with a soft-haired brush. If you would rather not buy a new one, soak the brush in linseed oil a week beforehand.

Can I paint a high-gloss door with a paint roller?

Professional painters recommend using a brush, but if you find this too much work, you can also use Anza's paint rollers to roll out the paint. We have one for water-based paint and one for solvent-based paint. Just make sure you roll carefully with not too much force.

Step 2: Strengthen your affected wood

To repair softened wood or wood rot, you can use Toupret Hard Wood. This is an agent that impregnates your wood, strengthening it. Polyfilla Houtrot impregneer also does the same job, but is available in a smaller package. Both products are applied with a brush suitable for solvent-based systems, such as the ProGold paint brush Round 7520.

When the product is no longer absorbed by the wood, but remains on it, the wood is saturated and you do not need to apply additional wood hardener.

Step 3: Repair corners and missing parts of the wood

Wood rot often causes pulping, broken corners and missing parts. Does your wood also suffer from this? Then use Polyfilla Houtrot vuller after impregnation. With this two-component wood filler paste, you can restore the wood to its original shape. How exactly do you do that? Remove loose wood parts as much as possible. Then mix the two components together in a ratio of 1 to 1. Apply with a spatula.

For larger repartitions, such as setting corners, it is better to use a mould covered with cling film.

Step 3: Repair corners and missing parts of the wood

For larger repartitions, such as setting corners, it is better to use a mould covered with cling film.

Last step: Prevent wood rot with a stain or lacquer

After drying for 3h, your wood rot is repaired. Hooray! But we're not quite there yet, because ideally you don't want any more wood rot to occur in the future. This is precisely why this step - applying wood protection - is essential. The most common wood protection comes in the form of a stain. Here, you can choose between a transparent stain or opaque stain. You can read more about this here.

A stain protects both your interior and exterior wood from UV rays and moisture, preventing water from penetrating the surface and thus preventing wood rot. However, if you want to protect your wooden surface against scratches as well, you should choose an exterior lacquer. This is because these are moisture-resistant and scratch-proof. Although with a stain, you have a more natural look, as the wood grains remain visible.

Do you also get wood rot from insects?

Wood rot is really caused by moisture. So insects such as woodworms do not form wood rot, but this obviously needs to be treated. This requires a slightly different approach. For instance, you need a woodworm remover to eliminate the insects. Then you can fill the small holes with an ordinary wood putty to restore your wood to its beautiful appearance as before.

Repairing wood rot has never been easier

There, you are now fully up to speed on exactly what needs to be done to revive your wood. If this makes you want to bring out the wood doctor in you yourself, add the products below to your shopping basket. Then that wood rot repair work will be fine. Still have questions? The customer service team will be happy to answer them for you by e-mail, phone or WhatsApp.