The door to upstairs has always been a bit rickety. I decided to, instead of buying a new one, try to fix it.
But first, I had to make a new door threshold. I had an old piece of red oak that I decided to cut up and custom make it.
This piece of wood had been under the floor in the ‘scary room’ many years ago. It felt very solid and heavy, but had quite a few holes and blemishes.
Here are the pieces after shaping but before I glued it all together.
Glued, shaped, sanded.
I fitted it before doing the final sanding and finishing.
Mole made me sandwiches while I was working!
This door has many problems, quite apart from the severe weathering. It looks like it got broken into at one point (!), and is held together with nails and white caulk.
More clamps = better! Felt like the door was getting reconstructive surgery.
Now the massively time consuming part. There are so many nooks and crannies on this door, sanding was a seriously labor intensive activity. I also had to fill a lot of areas, and made a new piece of trim to match where part of the door panel had been broken.
Many (seven!) months later, I finally got round to finishing the sanding. For all that time, I had a temporary door in. There’s nobody living in that unit, so the door isn’t in use anyway.
It was so satisfying to finally get stain on this door.
Here it is finished.