Refurbing old front door - any woodworkers?

[PaulStat]

We bought our house just over a year ago, the previous owners left the old front door in the garage, I'd like to refurb it by stripping all the old paint off, sanding it, painting it etc.

Here's the door in question.

















Now here comes the main question as you can see the bottom of the door has some rot, I'd like to cut the rot out and put new wood in, never having done any woodwork before I'm fairly clueless. Any ideas? (Luckily my father in law has lots of tools I can use to get the job done)

 

[PaulStat]

Thanks, very newb question but how do you remove the bottom rail?

 

[PaulStat]

Agree, this is tricky.
Part of the stile is gone, so that would need remaking along with it's tongue&groove joint to match the rail, so a router is required. In fact as it's the bottom of the door it would be better to scarf the stile in much further up, otherwise you are relying on two 90deg 3" glue joins to hold the whole rail in place.
Get a chippy to do it and make sure he doesn't just bodge a new bit on.

Worth doing though, those doors are lovely, unlike the utter tat that 99% of home destroyers owners usually replace it with.
Considering that all these post war houses were just thrown up as quick as possible, they did make nice doors.

Couple of questions

1. Remaking the stile, do you just mean the bottom section.
2. What does "scarf the stile" mean?

Oh and the door might be post war, but the house isn't



I think you can (just about maybe) see from this it's still the original frame as the stained glass matches.

 

[PaulStat]

Dunno if this helps, I took a picture of the top of the door showing the joints on the stile a bit more clearly



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

 

[PaulStat]

Another view of the joint, is this T&G?