There were many different MDF interior doors available in North America and Canada, but the problem was they all looked like the old traditional MDF doors with rounded corners and simple designs. The board of directors of Belmont, a famous MDF door company manufacturing its products for the US and Canadian markets, wanted to build MDF doors that looked like real wood doors. They wanted finer detailed corners that matched the doors we had been sourcing from our wood door manufacturers. There is a lot of mixing and matching in the door industry, where designs would incorporate a stained island, but painted doors on the perimeter. they wanted to have the exact match of the wood doors for the MDF doors and there just wasn’t a lot available which is why we decided to design and program their own. they purchased their first CNC machine and carefully developed a line of doors that fit their exact needs and specifications. they were doing that for about a year and then started selling to other kitchen manufacturers.” They never started out with a plan to get into the door business but they kind of fell into it.” 
“It really started with our suppliers and salespeople who would visit our shop. When they saw the quality of doors, we were producing we would hear “Oh, you should sell these! I know of a lot of companies that will buy these from you.” “We realized we were filling a niche in the market, making something that wasn’t really available and other kitchen manufacturers could benefit from providing to their customers the same sort of MDF door styles we were making for ourselves,” their boss says. Eventually, after selling more and more doors to other companies and demand continued to grow, in 2005 they decided to start Belmont Doors. “I never really expected it to take off as it did, but it just grew from there so we took advantage of it.” At the same time, the market was also shifting to more customers wanting a painted kitchen. “The painted finish with heavy glazing was really big at the time and everybody was using five-piece wood doors or five-piece wood with applied molding which ended up being a customer service nightmare. MDF was considered cheap, and hard to finish and these door designs in one piece just simply were not available in the industry. We did a lot of research and development into machining them properly,” the boss says. 
“It took us a long time and significant investments to perfect what we were designing with keeping the doors straight and to avoid warping (which is very important), and also to eliminate cracking, which was prevalent in the market at the time.” “We realized there was a niche for a one-piece door that would not crack. Many companies still use insert panels to create a two or five-piece door, however, Belmont Door’s has always been one-piece with no seams, eliminating any possibility of the paint finish cracking resulting from movement or glue lines and the careful machining takes paint easily.” All Belmont Doors are manufactured from 100 percent Western white softwoods and as a result offer a smoother substrate, which is ideal when opting for a painted finish. In the beginning, they split their employee pool between Belmont Doors and their initial company, but as the new Belmont Doors continued to grow, they slowly added dedicated employees. Belmont Doors now operates from a 9,000 sq. ft. space with 10 employees and continues to grow. They recently moved into a new, larger facility, which enables them to further streamline operations for a better flow. There was also room for a new finishing line for their primed doors and more room still to expand. 
Following the move, Belmont Doors added a new full conveyor belt horizontal finishing line for water-based priming. As part of this installation, CNC Automation installed the new Sunspot Linear Oven in tandem with their flat line overhead spray machine, which results in fully cured primed doors and shorter lead times. Not including sanding, it takes just five minutes from the time a door is put into the finished machine until it comes out dry at the end of the line and ready to be shipped. The universal water-based primed door enables its customers to spray virtually any coating on top without fear of chemical incompatibility. The result is a “ready to prep sand and paint” product that saves customers up to five steps in their finishing process. They have also added an automated sanding station for the edges of their doors resulting in a very consistent smooth edge for ease of finishing. “The time saving has been a real eye-opener,” Stutt says. They also still do hand sanding for their raw, unfinished doors, which is how it all started. “We do that as a bonus for our customers and that’s not something many other companies are offering,” she says. “It makes for a really nice finish ready for prep sand, priming, and topcoat.” 
But for many customers who aren’t that familiar with MDF or don’t like the hassle of dealing with raw MDF doors, Belmont Door’s primed MDF doors are the perfect solution and save them hours and hours of work. “Our customers don’t have to prime, prime again, wait for drying, and sand it for paint, which is a lot of steps and very time consuming,” she says. “The doors are ready for prep sand and topcoat right away.” “Instead of saving a few dollars by buying raw doors and spending all the extra time and labor to prime and sand them, they could be on to the next job and moving more volume through their shop,” says Stutt. “So, it makes a lot of sense. Remember we are using a water-based primer; because it’s better for the environment, and in the market, water-based can accept both lacquer and water-based topcoat finish. It is the most stable primer in the industry.” As they continue to grow, Belmont Doors is also looking at the possibility of adding finished doors in the future.
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