Fixing Damage to Wood Trim

A year ago I adopted a new dog. 

Then over Independence Day this year I watched my mom's new dog, Loretta, who it turns out is terrified of fireworks. Between the two of them both the door to my garage and the doorway of my spare room are sporting some impressive gouges.

Damage Rowena did to garage door.

Loretta was staying in the spare bedroom to keep her separated from Rowena since Loretta had picked up kennel cough the previous week. As a result I couldn't let her out in the house during the fireworks and she damaged her crate and scratched up the door in the spare room.

Since I have a new roommate moving in this weekend I decided to fix the gouges in her door frame (and while I was at it the door to the garage that Rowena damaged) so the room is more presentable. My dad recommended using a wood filler then repainting the trim, which turned out to be a pretty simple project.

Applied wood filler.

The wood filler is a consistency similar to play doh or a thick paste. After sanding down the wood, you can use a spreader to fill in the gouges with the wood filler and smooth it out as evenly as possible. Depending on the size of the gouges this may be easier or harder than it sounds. For a couple of the gouges in my door frame I had to let the first application of wood filler dry then apply a second layer in order to get the surface as level and smooth as possible. I also had some spots along the edge of the trim that were tricky since smoothing them with the spreader would cause the filler to be scraped away.

After letting the wood filler dry completely (which should only take a couple hours, but I just waited until the next evening) you can sand down any rough spots then repaint the area. The filler I got was a tan color that was pretty easy to cover with a couple coats of white paint. You can hardly tell there was any damage!

Before and After of door frame in spare bedroom.

After of the garage door, not much
I can do to salvage the actual door.

I have quite a few other spots around the house that can use a touch up coat of paint (but don't need wood filler), so I expect I'll be wandering around for the next few weeks freshening up my trim, windowsills, the spots in the bathroom that I missed while painting six years ago...