Today was a fantastic but long day. I finished installing the base trim, finished puttying all the nail holes, sanded all the yet-to-be-installed trim (crown, base shoe, base cap, window stop), sanded the putty, taped the walls and floor and put on a coat of stain.
Stained door trim
Stained closet door and back window
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.
A few weeks ago we got our doors and jambs back from Houck’s Stripping. Actually, he had been bugging me for awhile, but I was trying to defer picking them up until we were ready for them. As usual with remodeling projects, it became clear that the timing wouldn’t work out, so I just picked them up and jammed them in the garage. Our garage has looks more like the Rebuilding Center or the basement at Hippo Hardware than a garage, since it is packed full of wood, windows, a pink toilet and other materials that came out of our house. In fact, since we’ve never actually parked a car into either of its two stalls, I’m afraid that it probably feels very emasculated. Click to continue »
We got the floors refinished just before moving in. This is one of about three things that we did hire out. Floor refinishing is an art, and it’s not one that you want to practice on 1,000 square feet of your own wood floors.
The floors in this house are continuous through the entire downstairs, even into the closets. That means that you have to do all of it at once to keep it looking right, as there are no transitions between rooms.
We opted to have them refinished without a stain, because we thought that the lighter color would help offset the dark woodwork. In the end, we feel that we made the right choice.
Here is a picture of one of Chloe’s windows, after we replaced them with dual-pane windows. You can also see the initial attempt at stripping the casing with our speedheater. The futility of doing all of this led to me to find Houck’s Stripping Center, where I would end up taking all of the door and window trim. If you have a lot to do, dipping & stripping is the way to go!
Semi-stripped trim around new window
