The New Old Front Door

Here's the new old front door.


It has a very pretty dentil style molding under the beveled glass window, and matches our house age perfectly... it's almost identical to the one on the version of our house a block away.

The finish is cracking in places, and there is quite a bit of dirt on the door; luckily, it is shellacked and a simple wipe with denatured alcohol and a nylon scrubby removes the dirty cracking finish while leaving all of the aged character.



The door is not perfect; at one point in it's history, a standard lockset hole was drilled into the side opposite the original mortise lock. We'll be using the original holes, and plugging the circular hole. Hopefully, with stain, shellac, and the careful used of artist paints and brushes, we'll be able to hide the patch!

Back to the House

Did you wonder if this would ever turn back into a houseblog? Well, today is the day! I spent the weekend sanding and staining a new door for the water heater closet in the bathroom:

This doorway is 22" wide, an unusual size. Complicating matters was my want for a paneled door, and my preponsity for used doors. It is hard to cut 2 inches off of a used 24" door that has panels and door handles cut!

After years of searching, I finally found a 22" door at our local salvage store. It is newish, pine construction, and three panels. The smallest panel is just perfect for installing a vent; we are "flipping" the door over so that this panel will be on the bottom.

Here is the sanding:

I sanded first with 100 grit sandpaper on my orbital sander. The polyurethane finish gummed up the sandpaper quite fast; I was able to "pick" it off and keep going at intervals. After removing all finish, I finished up with 150 and 180 grit sandpaper. I wanted a dark stain, so stopped at 180.

I used the same stain on the door as I had used on the bathroom baseboard; Miniwax Red Mahogany:

This picture is of the first coat drying. I've since added one more coat, and will hopefully add the finish today after finding a vent to add.

More Door Stripping and a Query

After even more work with a utility knife and a bit of sandpaper, the door is starting to look better:



We might actually be able to keep it natural wood... but there is one problem. The citrus stripper I used to remove the paint from the decorative moulding has left a stain on the wood. I'm not sure if it's citrus stripper, or if the citrus stripper disolved the dye from the red paint that was the bottom layer, but there are red/orange stains on our wood. The stains are somewhat deep; a good sanding doesn't remove them. I've tried mineral spirits and denatured alcohol.



Any suggestions?

Stripping with Scrubbies

It's been gorgeous out. I've still been working on stripping our front door. It's taking forever, and I'm only doing one side well enough to stain!

I read a little tip about using nylon scrubbies and denatured alcohol to remove the last of the paint after you have tried the heat gun, chemical stripper (the citrus variety), the razor blades, and dental picks.

It didn't seem to work. Anyone have a better solution?

Door Swap

We realized last winter that our back door was a hollow core door masquerading as a back door. Not good for heat loss or efficiency! I took a trip to the Habitat ReStore and bought the cheapest solid door I could find as a replacement, as we intend on removing the doorway in the remodel (if it ever gets done).



It's not a bad little door... $30, and solid wood. Looks a lot better than the flat paneled hollow core door!

To match the hinges up, I stacked the doors on my "workbench" (picnic table). This allowed me to match the positioning exactly.

I reused the existing hinges, though they may not be beefy enough for this door (which is very heavy). The door is installed... and it does feel a little warmer in the laundry room now.

A New (Old) Storm Door

Picked up this storm door a few weeks ago; it needs a lot of work, but is just the right size for our odd opening.



It came with a glass storm insert AND a screen insert (the red behind the glass). One pane of glass is broken, and all of the panes need re-glazed. Part of the door needs re-glued, and the exterior side needs repainted, as the red paint is peeling and chipping. We'll leave the interior side natural. I'm excited; this should be the perfect small scale practice for reglazing our windows.

A Gift from a Colleague

At a recent rehearsal at a fellow musician's house, I found myself admiring the doorknobs and plates in his 50's style split level. They were all different types and vintages... Victorian, Art Deco, etc. Upon inquiring, I learned that they came from some of the 90 old houses torn down by the town's hospital during expansion over the years. He works with the maintenance department, and so was part of the demo. He saved all of the lighting and hardware that he could, and used much of it in his house.

He offered me the remaining doorplates and knobs, as every door in his house had a new old knob and plate.

I'm excited... there are enough plates to do all of the doors in our house! And, the brass knobs coupled with the black jet clay knobs I have should finish our doorknobs out, too!

It looks like I will be spending some time with a crock pot removing the paint; otherwise, they seem in excellent condition. Character is re-entering our house!

Stripping Paint in the Afternoon...

We worked a bit more on the new front door today. I'd like to have it done this week, as our current front door is cracked, and in need of serious weatherstripping to make it through this next winter. You can see daylight around the edges on almost all sides. Instead of spending time with the old one, I'd rather install the new (old) one!

We worked on the exterior side today... the side with the weird paint/chalk. We used a citrus based stripper (covered with saran wrap to keep it moist) to strip the top layers of paint off of the mouldings and around the lites.



The ash tree above our "workbench" (old picnic table) decided to add some leaves for visual interest.

After we scraped the paint off with various dental tools, the head of a large nail, and a brass stripping brush, we cleaned it with mineral spirits. No picture, because it looks exactly the same in a picture; the stripper had seemingly no or little effect on the chalky bottom paint. My hunch is that it is a plaster or drywall compound spread on to smooth defects and ensure a "perfect" paint job.

That's what we did to seal up our house this weekend. It's round about and not immediate, but it should help out in the long run.

The New Front Door- Side One

Over the last few days, I have taken this door from this:



to THIS:



Any guesses on wood type? I was assuming pine when I bought it; that doesn't look like pine to me, though.

Still have to remove the paint from here (around each inset panel)...



and here (around each of six windows)...



We are debating painting or staining. This is the interior side of the door; the rest of our doors will all be natural wood. We would love to keep this door natural on the inside, too... but there are a few imperfections. Here is the largest gauge:



It is about 1/4 inch deep, and about 2 inches wide and 4 inches tall. The rest are mostly holes, or small scratches. Thoughts on my ability to hide or patch imperfections like this?

What A Change! (Siding Update)

One Week Ago:


Today:


We removed ALL of the wood from the front and east side of the house today (except the corners)!



I pried wood from the fronts of the windows:



Those white things are the original headers and sills. They seem to be in excellent condition... a little sanding and paint, and they'll be good as new! Now you can REALLY see why getting the exact size of window MIGHT be non-negotiable.

Here's a view of the door's header... it's in the same vein, though much thicker:



Tomorrow: Wood and steel siding come down off of the west side!

A Door Style Question... Does it "Fit"?

So, back when we bought the house, I had no idea about true historic styling and such. I just knew I liked old houses, and LOVED the ones that had been restored.

We bought our little ambiguous cottage, filled with hollow core doors, particle board builder's special baseboards, and cardboard cabinets... it was what we could afford, and it had good "bones".

A few months later, while looking for doors to replace our hollow core nasties, we stumbled upon these mahogany veneered doors at a local salvage yard. They looked so nice (though they needed a lot of work), and the price was just right ($25 each).

Here is one of the doors installed on our bathroom:



And here is the door with its new black jet doorknob:





Now here is the question/concern:

The door in question is CLEARLY a 1930's to 40's Tudor style door... in retrospect, it came right out of a set of university apartments that were VERY Tudor. It came with a cut glass knob and a very cool set of plates, too.

OUR house, on the other hand, may be ambiguous, but Tudor it is CLEARLY not. Our plans for the interior/exterior involve very simple woodwork along the lines of a very simplified Victorian merging a little into Craftsman (as might have been done in a 1911 folk house). These doors feel a little grand for such plans.

I felt that adding those black doorknobs helped the door fit our house quite a bit... but do they LOOK right? I'm not totally concerned about "period" style... but I want it to look good.

I suppose I could always strip down and refinish them and then sell for $150 each, giving me money to buy the 5 panel doors that would be perfect... but it's hard to find those unpainted. And these are a lot less work, since they just need a light sanding and a quick refinish.

Any thoughts?

Polishing My (Door) Knobs

Remember my ebay find: the jet door knobs? I spent some time cleaning them up today.


The door knobs, taken apart and waiting... $20 for all of those knobs!


Up close shot of one of the door knobs... notice the surface rust.

I used a car battery cleaner (essentially, a stiff wire brush) to clean off the rust, then finished up with 00 steel wool and WD 40. I'm going to finish the job with metal polish... but have to run out and buy some.

I couldn't wait to install one of the knobs on our new bathroom door...


A new jet door knob installed on our mahogany bathroom door!

Door Stripping!

In great anticipation of ripping the siding off this June, I have started working on the new front door. The door's paint layers show that it has been purple, green, burgundy, white, tan, and red.

Here is the back side of the door:



Here is a small bit of peeling paint:




Here is a bucket of lead paint chips... breakfast anyone?


Here is what I accomplished today:


A closer look at the wood graining:

My goal is to be better at identifying wood types... it looks like pine to me. Am I wrong?

We are going to repaint it a yet-to-be-determined color, as it is no condition to be stained (there are quite a few dings and dents on the edges of the door, and a few on the faces.) Maybe a nice deep muted blue would be nice... or a nice dark sagey green.

On Doors and Doorknobs...

We spent a little time last week poking around at ReSource; they had just gotten in a brand new donation of old doors.

Here is our new front door:


We bought it ONE day before discovering our house was actually brick; I'm hoping it isn't too "new" for house once we restore the brick. Our old door is rotting, cracked, and has a plexiglass window... can't wait to put this one in. It was only $30, too! We have the original hardware; it is in a different place.

Also, we decided to use the black "porcelain" (or jet) doorknobs throughout the house. We bought one at ReSource, and found a lot of the knobs on ebay for cheap:



$20 after shipping and handling. They look like they need a lot of work, but hopefully I can salvage most of them.

I am a big fan of unifying features in such a small house; I have this need for all doors, doorknobs, trim, lights, etc to be the same throughout our house. Is anyone else like this, or am I just a freak for symmetry?

Second Verse, Same as the First... WAIT! WE DID IT!

Since our utter failure two weeks ago we been trying to reconcile ourselves to permanent life without a bathroom door. Sure it meant no visitors who weren't like family... but the thought of tackling the door was completely overwhelming.

Today I decided that I would try one more time. By myself.

It was very deja vu. I did the same things that we did last week as I attached yet another door jamb and chiseled new mortises. I won't bore you with the nitty gritty details, as they are already detailed in previous posts.

This time, though, I measured. I measured again. And, then... I measured one more time. I checked all of the plumb and squared lines.

I decided to leave the broken off screws in the studs and shift the door up the jamb a tiny bit to allow room for the new screw holes. I chose a bit 2 sizes bigger for my pilot holes to avoid the screws snapping off in installation... many thanks to The Handyguys for their diagnosis of the problem!

I carefully screwed the hinges into the stud and jamb, wedged a few shims under the extremely heavy door (...and no Karen, I still didn't get a weight on it. I'll have to forfeit on a technicality!) and slowly slid the door into position. This time, I managed to get the hinges in exactly the right place.

Here are a few pictures of the door. It's still missing the door stop, the knob, and is yet unfinished. (And don't mind the dirty laundry. I didn't see it until I looked at the pictures!)



Looking in from the living room...



...and from inside the bathroom. Don't mind the dirty laundry!

I'll post finished pictures later!

For those of you who followed this, what a learning curve! I feel comfortable enough to tackle the rest of the doors in the house now. Don't be too afraid to tackle a non-prehung door... just measure. Over and over. And don't drill your pilot holes too small!

Utter Failure (help?)

As I promised here and here, there was utter failure in door hanging at our house last weekend. Here's the nitty gritty, and what you can learn from us!

Level and plumb your jambs INCLUDING the header before you nail it into the wall. If you don't, your work is futile.

We didn't. Well, I thought I remembered doing it, but it was VERY obvious that we did NOT plumb or level the jamb. We hauled our 50 or 60 lb door (sorry Karen of Delano Bungalow... we don't know if it rivals yours as neither of us could hold it by ourselves!) into position, using shims to brace it up off the floor. Then, we noticed that the jamb was NO WHERE near square. Sigh.

We pried off the door jamb, and made sure it was square with itself and plumb. We discovered that the finish nails we used did not want to come out of our steel-like 100 year old wood studs, and came up with this ingenious solution:



Vise grips holding the nail head, with a crowbar doing the prying using the vise grips as a de facto head.

We discovered that our wall is actually no where near plumb, which is what caused us to hang our jamb off of plumb. I would say it's about 5º off.

We used shims to set the jamb in a square and plumb fashion,



making sure to use two shims each time for stability.

The jamb is now square and plumb... but it sticks out over the drywall in places and doesn't cover the stud in others. It's essentially at a diagonal to the stud. I don't know if this is OK at all... but we decided to go ahead.

Measure twice, measure again, and THEN cut. Then, measure again. It might have moved.

We measured once. We are sorry excuses for home improvers. We measured the distances for our mortises onto the jambs once, and then set at it with chisels. We chipped out perfect mortises, screwed our jamb side hinges in, and proceeded to attempt door installation.

It didn't fit. The bottom hinge was approximately 1/8 inch too low. Back to the drawing (measuring) board.


Buy good screws... NOT the cheap zinc ones.

We used wood screws we had lying around. They were zinc screws, 2-1/2 inches long. They seemed perfect for screwing the hinges into the jamb and stud.

They were not.

We discovered the jamb hinges were too far apart after many attempts at sliding it in. We did rest the entire weight of the door on the bottom hinge at one point. When we gave up and started to remove the bottom hinge to move it, we were dismayed to find that the screws had snapped off. Only the heads and about 1/4 inch could be removed from the walls. Panic set in...

We went to a big box store and broke our pledge by buying a hole saw. The new plan is to remove the screws in 3/4 inch plugs, and then fill in the holes in the studs with 3/4 inch hardwood dowel. See any problems with this?




Can you help me?

1) Should we hang the door jamb as planned, 5º off of the rest of the wall?
2) Should we remove the 2 snapped off screws using the hole saw and plugged with dowel, or is there a better way?
3) What screws should we use that will support this huge heavy door? I don't trust the zinc wood screws since they already snapped off.

Cutting the Bottoms Off Doors (Postponement of Utter Failure)

I know I promised utter failure as my next post... it's coming. I forgot that I hadn't yet shown off my utter success in door trimming!

You say your door is too tall for your door space now that you have put down slate tile? Here's how to fix this in 15 minutes or less.

Needed:
Painter's Tape, 2 inches wide
Circular Saw with a sharp blade
Straight Edge
Tape Measure

First, measure the door jamb to determine the proper height. You want at least 1/4 inch of difference between the door and the frame/jamb heights... we went with 1/2 inch due to our uneven natural stone flooring.

Place tape around the door bottom where you want to trim it, covering both top and bottom as well as the sides. (Always trim a door up from the bottom). Measure, and use a straight edge to draw your cutting line.



We always use our level as our straight edge. It's the straightest thing around!

Carefully line up your circular saw on the cut line, with the blade going into the door about 55%. Cut along line (turn off saw) and flip the door. Carefully cut on the other side to complete the cut.



If you did not line your lines up perfectly on each side, there will be a small lip or ledge on the bottom at the juncture of the two cuts. Use a belt sander to even the bottom of the door. We managed to line it up perfectly, and did not need to sand it down.

• WHY? Why cut both sides separately, instead of just cutting through the whole door in one pass?
• Splinters. You might get away with that in a new door, or in a solid door, but ours is a laminated mahogany. The blade tearing through the veneer from the back would likely splinter and dislodge the mahogany... which is not something we wanted to happen.

After you have made your cuts, take sandpaper to the door bottom to smooth your work. Sand lightly on the edges of your cut to round them naturally and to help them blend in with the rest of the 70 year old door. You will want to do this BEFORE finishing the door, if it is not yet finished.

Cutting Mortises in Door Jambs

We are going slightly out of order here... here is our experience in door jamb mortise cutting.

To cut the mortises you will need a few things:

A Hammer
A Chisel the same width as your hinge

Remember... measure twice, cut once. Oh, yes... and measure again... and throw something at the wall because your hinges moved on you after you cut the mortise. That MUST be it.

First, score the edges of your mortise:


Then, chisel lines across the mortise using a chisel the same width as the mortise. Make the lines about 1/8 inch apart.


Finally, take the chisel, bevel side down, and gently tap up through your lines. They should come up quite easily.

As you can see from the picture, this was NOT what we tried first... we don't recommend simply whacking at the jamb with the hammer and chisel. (The chip at the top of the mortise is from THAT method.) The method we depicted DOES work, however, and gives you nice flat and smooth mortises.

Next.... UTTER FAILURE in door hanging. Stay tuned.

Sparkly Door Hinges and Steel Wool

This is a hinge from my mahogany doors:

It has a small amount of white paint on it, and is lightly rusted on the exposed parts due to its brief stay out in the elements at the salvage store.

These are the hinges after chipping the paint off with a screwdriver and thoroughly polishing them with WD-40 and 00 steel wool:

The WD-40 and steel wool did a marvelous job of gently removing the surface rust. It took about 5 minutes of careful polishing and scrubbing on each hinge to remove the rust.

Next up: An attempted door installation

On Door Jambs and Frugality

We installed the door jamb in the bathroom yesterday (and today).

First, we measured the door opening from top to the floor. We cut each side of the jamb to exactly that height, using our new miter saw.



Then, we placed the jamb sides in the door frame, measured the distance between, and cut a piece of jamb that was that size for the header.

After we cut our header, we nailed the jamb together for installation.



We used our square to keep the corners squared as we tapped wire brads into the wood to hold the jamb together.

We reused the old nails from the previous door jamb by carefully tapping them back into shape.



Miserly, miserly people we are.

We used these nails (plus a few more- remember, the old jamb was held up by 5 nails) to attach the jamb to the studs.



But WAIT... what is THAT? That huge GAP between the header and the side?
We can't have that.

Back to the saw with a fresh set of measurements taken with the sides pressed firmly against the studs.



After putting FOUR nails in each board, our jamb seems secure.

We used solid pine instead of MDF to increase the permanence and solidity of our jamb and door installation.

Where:
Door Jamb: Home Depot
Nails: Salvage and Lowe's

Cost:
Door Jamb: $18
Nails: Free and $2 for a box