door

Or maybe it was a raccoon, an opossum and a rat.  And it wasn’t in a pub but actually a blue tarp that had been protecting (I use the term loosely) our large stack of stripped down doors until we had time to refinish them.

While doing the annual spring cleaning of our patio, I lifted up said tarp, so that I could relocate the doors, which had been lying across two sawhorses since last summer.  My first thought was that Chloe had picked up a piece of dog poop with something and then put it under the tarp.  That didn’t make sense anyway, but especially not once I grasped the magnitude of the “deposits.”  And once I got over my initial shock, it became clear that at least two different species had been shacking up under our tarp.  I consider myself open-minded, but even I wasn’t comfortable with this type of relationship.

Another possibility is that it was an opossum having a litter of babies on top of our closet door.  I used a scraper and a hose to knock everything off, but as you can see from the picture, there was definitely some damage.  I am hoping that once it’s sanded and refinished with a dark stain, it won’t be too noticeable.  That is not a job I’m looking forward to!

Pre-stained, err...pee-stained

Another moderate weekend of work, but the end is definitely close enough to taste now!  The biggest indicator of progress is that the scaffold has been broken down and won’t be set up again for this project.  The only things left on the punch list are:

• strip and re-finish front door
• finish sidelights and trim around front door
• touch up the trim around 6 windows with bronze paint
• paint and install 2 more storm windows
• paint exposed trim on back dormer
• add trim around back dormer windows
• rebuild rotted posts and railings in front of porch

Considering where we started, that is a teeny little list.  It may or may not all get done this fall, but we are at least weather-tight and ready for the rain now.

Sidelights look much more distinguised with their new bronze paint

Bronze-painted storm windows re-installed

All rafters painted!

The lazy (but fast) way out of the mess of a back dormer...covering it with metal!

Things are really feeling good.  Three of the dormers are done, sans touch-ups, and we have moved the scaffold over to the other side of the house.  The end is clearly in sight now!

Dormer #3...check.

Cheap labor

Primed jambs and sidelights

Completed west side

The tallest platform shoes ever

After another full week, things are looking much, much better.  The front is almost completely done, as is the west side.  We finally picked the accent color, and the front dormer is the first area to have all the colors together in one place.  I stripped down the peeling paint around the front door and even started the door itself.  Ultimately, we plan on staining the door and sidelights.

Porch ceiling, with only a few touch-ups left

Front window trim painted

Remember how the front windows used to look? Not to mention Chloe...

A full-day project! (trim not painted here yet, but note the accent color above)

The old purple door

A complete paint job! (at least what you can see...)

And the scaffolding has been moved around the corner for more rafter tails

Now it's hard to believe we lived with this color for so long...

I looked back and realized it’s been six months since we’ve posted (or done) any actual renovation updates.  Today, that’s changing.  I started sanding the old, worn stain off the family room doors, so that we can match them to the new trim stain.  It’s not much fun.  If anyone knows of any power sanders that can actually do a good job in the crevices of these doors, let me know!  I spent almost three hours working on a single door, and I’m still not done.  Yuck.

Close, but still a long ways to go...

Today was much more fulfilling than yesterday.  If you compare the pictures, you’ll see why!

It always takes me awhile to get back in the groove of hauling up all the tools and starting the circus of sawing, shaving, cutting, sanding, shimming and nailing that’s necessary to install door and window trim.  At least a couple of times during the last two days I wished that we had torn down the plaster instead of drywalling over the top.  Which is worse?  Tearing down some plaster, which takes just a little physical labor, or creating a trim nightmare by increasing your wall depth?  What made it so bad is that the drywall is not at a uniform depth, so the depth difference varies from 1/2″ to 3/4″, sometimes along the length of a given piece of casing.  That meant I had to try to cut and sand down a  strip of fir at an angle to try to even things out.  Of the four openings in this room, only the closet door cooperated by needing a constant 1/2″ filler strip.

Next?  Finishing the base trim and filling all the old and new nail holes, a little more sanding and then onto staining.  I also need to buy, finish and install the crown and the little cap trim that sits on top of the base.  I never have any idea what that piece is called.  I will be going to McCoy Millwork to get these pieces, since I couldn’t find anything appropriate at the usual suspects, Mr. Plywood and Home Depot.

I went through the site and realized that we didn’t have any “before” pictures of this room.  I created a new post so you can see what it used to look like.  Don’t be fooled by the walls in the picture.  The white paint over the wallpaper over the cracked plaster photographed really well!

Door now has trim

Side window and first piece of base trim

Closet door and window facing patio

This is the part where you simultaneously realize how good things are going to look, feel like you are making progress and become completely aware of how long it’s going to take to finish. It’s a 50/50 mix of elation and dread. Today I sanded Ginger’s closet doors and got the first coat of stain on them. The fir looks simply beautiful. I don’t think anything can touch old growth fir in terms of warmth. While new doors, such as the ones we put in the kitchen, look great, the vertical grain doesn’t look as varied or interesting as the flat-sawn to me. And if you don’t remember, we scored these old cabinet doors for $40 at the Rebuilding Center. There aren’t many places where you can find 5′ doors, especially for a great price. Of course the real “price” comes when your back is sore from spending hours and hours bent over while sanding and staining

A couple of days ago I sanded Ginger’s door down to get it ready for stain. Like all the upstairs doors, we had taken it to get dipped & stripped (probably over a year ago!), but unfortunately, the work never ends there. I hadn’t really looked at them too closely after getting them back from the strippers, but while sanding them, I noticed that the strippers had been a little to aggressive with their scrapers. One side of the door had really rough-sawn panels, and apparently the texture wasn’t willing to let go of the paint, forcing the strippers to scrape and gouge the panels to get the paint off. Because these gouges cut pretty deep, I decided to sand all of the panels smooth in order to remove the grooves. On the plus side, we now have nice, smooth panels on both sides of the door, but the negative was the hours I had to spend to sand just one door. Even with a power sander, it took forever to sand enough off to make the gouges less visible. They didn’t come out perfectly, but the great thing about old doors with beautiful grain is that the remaining blemishes actually add more character to the door. At least that’s what I tell myself, so that I can stop sanding. Comparing it to the way it looked when we bought the house, it was worth all the time and expense.

Ginger’s room is coming along nicely. The most difficult part, not surprisingly, was the closet doors. We always find that any of the “adapted” house parts that we get from salvage yards (in this case, the Rebuilding Center) end up taking the lion’s share of the labor time. The story here was that we needed doors just a bit shorter than 5′ for the closets, and new fir doors were quoted out in the neighborhood of $800…each! We got these, which are actually some sort of old cabinet doors for $30 or $40. Total cost after having the lead paint stripped off was maybe $150. The downside is that I had to fabricate jambs for them, since they had none. This is the type of project for which I have little patience, skill or interest. But the cost difference is pretty compelling, and of course, we always like to be able to reuse something old in our house whenever possible. Today also saw the new windows go in, so by tomorrow all the trim in the room and closets should be finished as well. Also, I got another coat of mud on the stairwell, but it doesn’t look different enough to warrant a new picture.

This weekend saw another closet door hung, as well as more trim in Chloe’s room. I basically just worked until I ran out of wood, which didn’t take too long. Got to pick up more MDF this week.  As often happens, I realized that my “vision” was limited when I created the closet openings.  If I had just put them a few inches over, I wouldn’t have had to do all the funky cuts in the trim.  On the other hand, I think they look kind of cool with the notches for the rafters in them.