I am trying to ignore the blatant fact that I haven't written a blog post in over 3 months! I apologize greatly to all those that are actually interested in what goes on around 9808. It hasn't been for lack of nothing getting done though. Things have definitely been moving and shaking...so much so that I have failed to find time to blog about it. Oh well, enough excuses!
One project came to be a few weeks ago as I was sitting on the couch one evening pondering what I should tackle in the half an hour of spare time I had. I was facing the door down to the basement and thought, "maybe I will chuck a coat of white paint on that door quick"....
I already knew the job was going to take longer than half an hour but I could definitely give it a once over with the sandpaper to prep it for paint. It shouldn't take that long right?...
Little did I know what I would find once I started the "quick sand" process! We already knew that the previous owners had literally slapped a coat of paint on every paintable surface when the house was up for sale. They even painted things that weren't meant to be painted such as all of the original hardware. Some people, I tell ya.
As I started my light sand, the first layer of paint began peeling away in chunks, so naturally it all had to come off. After sanding a little deeper I discovered that the door looked like it had been originally stained. This caused huge excitement on my part! After yelling at D to come look, he was pretty excited as well at the prospect of stripping the doors back to their original state.
So we went to work peeling off the top coat of white paint with razor blades and then taking the door downstairs to our basement turned project room to tackle the remaining layers.
Peeling the first layer of paint off was the easy part and quite fun I must say. The older original layers were not as easy and I wouldn't say I had that much fun either. We started out by using the sander and then, which seemed like hours later, resorted to using paint stripper. Much easier and definitely more rewarding.
I was worried that the aircraft paint stripper we had on hand was going to damage the wood but it worked out fine. No we don't own an aircraft or have ever stripped the paint off an aircraft! D uses it on vehicles and parts etc.
After finally getting the door back down to bare wood (I believe it took us about 2 evenings worth of work), we applied 3 coats of English Walnut wood stain and 2 coats of sealer. D did one coat of stain per evening, giving it 24 hours to dry between coats. The entire project took about a week to complete. I should also mention that was only one side of the door. We were in a hurry to get it back up and admire our handiwork ;)
We also stripped the paint off all the hardware and freshened them up with a couple of coats of spray paint.
D and I are super happy with the results. Though it does now emphasize how much the floors need to be redone. One day....
Bonus: A sneak peek at our newly "minted" front door! The hardware still needs a coat of paint over there also.
We still need to clean things up a bit more and um paint the screw heads as well. As I said, we were impatient to get the door rehung ;)
Of course if we do one door then naturally we need to redo all of the interior doors. Needless to say we are going on 2 weeks without a bedroom door!
