Hi,

I could do with some advice on how to paint varnished wood. I also
have a couple of questions. I have done a google search on this news
group for answers but there seem to be a number of solutions to my
problem so I could do with a little clarification.

Basically, the house I am looking to purchase has the following

- brown skirting boards
- brown panel doors
- brown wooden stair banister. This is a really really deep brown
colour.

Im no expert at all on wood, but I imagine that all of the above was
originally light coloured wood when it was fabricated and was then
stained to make it the current colour. Does this sound correct?

What I would like to look at doing is making all of this white. Can
all of the above listed areas be easily turned white including the
panel doors?

Reading other posts it seems that there are a couple of ways to do
this. The first way seems to be to sand down the surface so the new
primer/paint has something to key to. Do I need to fully sand down the
surface or just "rough" the surface up.

Presumably I need to apply a primer before paint?

The second method appears to be to buy some special paint/primer(?)
and just apply that to the current surface and then just gloss paint
over it. How effective is this method and is it more cost/time
effective that sanding the surface down?

Thanks in advance for any help,

Charles.