Category: office

We finished one more thing on the list: the doors between Janeen’s office and the living room. After stripping all the paint off the doors, we carefully sanded the doors.

I then stained the doors with an oil based stain called ‘Old American’. It’s actually a lot more yellow than the photo below right shows. Below left you can see the door before it was stained.

We had some trouble at first figuring out how to strip the paint off the old brass door hardware. It’s much more delicate than the steel hinges, so we couldn’t attack it with a wire brush and heat gun. At first we tried using the heat gun, but the paint just wouldn’t come off completely. Chemical paint stripper and a toothbrush did the trick beautifully, though. And it didn’t damage the black oxide background to the patterns on the hand grips. They then polished up nicely with Brasso. Below right you can see how they looked on the door before.

After two coats of oil based color polyurethane (‘cherry’), the doors are done.

I reinstalled the brass hardware, and after a bit of adjustment, it all works quite nicely. The doors are not perfect, but I like the slight dents and imperfections: the doors are 100 years old, after all.

Janeen took the photo below. I think she was trying to decide if these are good work boots. The photo on the right shows the stain rags, air drying. Apparently if you bundle them up in a plastic garbage bag when wet, they can spontaneously catch fire. Not good in a wood house.

We ordered a fancy new desk for Janeen: It’s height can be adjusted electrically, to be a standing or sitting desk. I need to make a top for it, though. Until we get the office complete, the living room will be Janeen’s office.

Right now it feels like we are moving in slow motion. We have got the bathroom to a point where it’s ready to paint. Before we can get the bedroom finished, we need to rent the insulation blower again, and fill the walls with insulation. But all of Janeen’s office furniture is currently in the kitchen (we moved it there before doing the floors). To clear it out, and finish the bedroom and kitchen, Janeen is going to move her office into the downstairs living room while we work on the kitchen and bedroom. This way, we can move onto working on her office without moving all the furniture again.

I’ve spent the last couple of weeks trying to get the downstairs living room finished and sealed off. Until now, the door into the living room has been siting in the garage. Janeen had already stripped the paint off the door, and done most of the sanding. Time to stain and finish it.

The stain turned out quite a bit darker than I had planned, but I think it looks ok next to the white trim. Also,  I started finishing the double doors that lead between the front and the living room.

To seal the living room from the front room (Janeen’s office), I need to finish the double doors that lead between the two rooms. Janeen has already stripped the paint from one side. The doors had been varnished originally, then painted over in white at some time. It’s obvious there was some incompatibility between the paint and the varnish, as the paint had gone all cracked. The photo on the right below shows the chipped paint, and also the random lines of cracking in the paint.

Stripping off the old paint went really fast, as the old finish must have been waxed. Upon applying the heat gun, the paint just bubbled up and fell off in sheets, exposing the old finish. The finish was a faux wood grain, on top of wood! It’s a pity I could not save the old finish. It’s much too damaged. The faux finish must have given a uniform appearance, and made the doors look like hardwood, instead of beautiful old-growth douglas fir. Well, I’m no faux finisher. We’re just going to use stain and polyurethane.