A Door Where Once There Wasn't

Going....

Lest you thought we had stopped all work on the house, I am here to reassure you that not a single picture frame in this house is level due to the continuous sawing and pounding happening still.

Seriously.   Not one stinking picture frame stays level for more than a day.   I'd blame it on the traffic, but...there is no traffic here.

Actually, there was a traffic jam once, a long time ago.  In the winter.   When, within a few minutes of each other, the gas truck and the school bus both went off the road on the hill just past us.  It stopped traffic for hours.  People still talk about it and it's been like 30 years ago.

 

Going...

At any rate, one of our current house projects is the moving of some doorways for...reasons.   Briefly:  We had to cut a new door from the area outside the bathroom to the living room, which used to be our bedroom so we could seal up the old door from the little hall in front of the basement stairs to the living room [which used to be our bedroom].  We'll be putting structural stuff in that hallway [that's the short version.]  Then we [and by 'we' I hope you know I mean Eric] sealed up the door that used to go from the the bedroom/livingroom to the hallway outside the basement stairs and sealed up the door that used to go from the little hallway in front of the basement stairs into the dining room, so we could move my desk in front of there so we could cut a big door where the pass-through used to be from the hallway in front of the up stairs and front door into the dining room.

Gone!

I know.   It's ridiculously confusing.   The girls will be home in a little while and they'll probably get lost trying to get from the hallway into the living room.   At any rate, we can get to every room and we can also get outside.

There have been a few surprises as Eric cut into the walls - there always are with this place.   We found an old doorway in one of the walls where no doorway had any business being and for the life of us we can't figure out why it was there.  Maybe that's why they boarded it up?   We also found an electric line that had no business being there.   Not to worry, it was discovered and moved without incident.

And not coming back.

There is less dust behind the desk because we moved it and everything on and around it and the law is that if it's moved, it is cleaned, but there is more dust on the desk because sawing.   As soon as I'm done with this post, I'll be dusting.  Again.

By far the most exciting part was when Eric was taking off the last little bit in the middle left there [see last pic] and everything on the walls and desk started dancing right off whatever surface they were on.  Never a dull moment here.

The pics are of the new doorway where the old pass-through used to be just inside the front door.   Pretty nifty.

In case you were wondering, these are not where the doors will be going in the end.  They're just temporary solutions until we get more other stuff done and the old structure ripped out completely.

Also, sawzalls are the Best. Things. Ever.

I'm going to go dust now.

#thisprojectisnevergoingtoend

Claire's Door

This is Claire's door.   It used to be the original front door of the house.    That is the original rim lock and door handle and the original half mortise hinges.   They were in pretty rough shape so we cleaned them up and spray painted them plain black.

Look carefully.  This door is crooked on every side.

Every.  Single.  One.

Were they drunk??

It's got such a great story that we decided to just run with it.   When the final trim goes up some of the uneven-ness won't show so much.

The bigger issue is that this is a bedroom door with a big glass panel.   Claire is still deciding whether to go for a heavy curtain, paint, wood/metal insert, contact paper, or something else to cover it up.

I voted for a heavy curtain on the inside with the old fashioned gold and black lettering on the outside glass, like this:

Claire's

Laboratory 

Claire's not so big on the idea, but I love it.

Door Trim

This is the door trim we are putting around the doors in the bedrooms upstairs.  Lily's door.  I love the craftsman styling.  

We decided to do transoms above the doors because:
a.  The doors don't match.
b.  The doors are all different heights.
c.  The doors all have stories [code for: some of them are looking pretty rough in places] and the transoms will tie them together nicely.
d.  It was all a good excuse to do it.

I'll do a post as we get closer to doing the transoms.   I got the hardware [not on there yet] from House of Antique Hardware during a 25% off sale this summer.   It's the only way I could rationalize it.   Eric will be building the transoms from scratch.

The trim is poplar.   We did 2 coats of Red Chestnut stain and 6-8 coats of amber shellac after that with a couple sandings with 220 grit after every 2-3 coats of shellac. I stopped when the look and feel was right. 

The trim goes fabulously with the doors.

Here's Claire's door trim.

Please notice that my kids are not afraid of color.  At.  All.   They chose their own colors and when they get tired of it, paint is cheap and painting is easy.   We'll change it if we ever have to.

Lily's Antique Door

A year ago I got some old doors from a local salvage place. I was thrilled.  $25 each.   What a deal.

Not.

More than $200 in paint strippers [yes, plural] and hours of stripping later, I decided that would be the last batch of painted doors I'd be getting, unless I was planning to just paint over them.

Stripping [in any sense of the word] is not my idea of a good time.

I was so disgusted by the whole process, that I didn't get any 'before' pics.   You'll just have to imagine 8 layers of paint over a beautifully shellacked original finish.   The stripper killed the original finish.   The door hardware was covered with layers of paint as well and had to be stripped.  The lock was full of mud and bug guts.

The door:  Turned out to be fir under all the paint. I'm guessing the original finish was Garnet Shellac.  Gorgeous, red.   I can't get that here made up, but I can get the Amber and Clear.  [I'm not interested in cooking up my own yet.  Maybe later.]   So,  I went out and got some Varathane Red Chestnut stain and stained the door. 

If you look at the pic of the finished door, right, you'll see lots of black lines.   This door was stored in a barn and over the years it swelled and cracked the paint, then fungus got in there and started some spalting.  I love it.   I was able to save most of the spalting by not scrubbing too hard during the stripping.

Also, if you look really hard, you can see bits of paint I didn't get out.  I worked on these doors for hours, using maybe 6 coverings of stripper.   Enough already.  Plus I like being reminded of the door's past.  Plus, you already know my Let's Get On With It Already philosophy. 

In the end, the spalting looks great with the Red Chestnut stain and a coat of Amber shellac on top of that.   I love it.   Love. It.

The Lock.  Mortise lock full of crap.  Full story here.   I gerry rigged a fix, then when it came time to put it back in the door, it didn't quite fit, so I finessed a bit and now it fits and works great.

The Door Hardware.   This stuff was covered with almost as much paint as the doors.   Decades of it.   I gave it a long bath in hot soapy water [a couple of days' worth] then pulled out the paint with a bamboo skewer.   You can see bits of the old 'japanned' finish left under there, but way too much of the base metal showing....and rusting.   As much as I wanted to keep that old finish, in this climate, we'd have been fighting rust constantly, so we decided to spray.

Long story short, I went with Rust-Oleum's metallic paint in Oil Rubbed Bronze.   Note:  It doesn't say oil rubbed bronze on the can.   You have to just look at the cap.   Basically, this is black paint with bronze-y sparkle in it.   Tip:   Spray the backs first, then flip and do the tops.   This stuff dries fast, so you can do the other side in about 15 minutes.

In person it comes off as brown, not black, but it's really hard to photograph.

Still, it wasn't the look we were after, so we decided to highlight with some paint I had around the studio.  I grabbed a pot of  Versatex pearlized bronze pigment. There are other metallics also:  silver, bright gold, copper... This stuff is designed for silk screening paper and fabric [which is why I had some.]  We tested it on an iron rosette from another door and it dried fine and would not rub off at all.   A product that is designed more for this kind of thing is Amaco's Rub 'N Buff.  Check out all their colors, here.


The process is simple.   Sit down and apply with your fingers.  Stop when you think it's enough.  Since this is Lily's door, she was in charge of highlighting as much as she wanted.

When it looked right, she stopped.    We let it dry overnight, then installed everything the next day.

Et voila'!   I like how it changes in different lights.   Look up at the first pic again to see how it looks in a different light. 

Lily's bedroom door is done.    Claire's is up next with a whole different set of issues.