When One Door Shuts, Another Opens

“Look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else.”

― Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead

I live in a Colonial-style home that was built in 1925. The doors in my home are from the 20s with glass door knobs and heavy brass hinges. They are lovely—all except one door, that is.

The door leading to the basement/laundry area is the abnormal one. It is a hollow-core door with peeling laminate from decades gone by and I positively hate it. For a while now it has been my goal to one day change out this door to match the others in my home.

The door to the basement. YUCK!

One day, about a year ago, my neighbor (who had done extensive renovations on her home prior to moving in a few years ago) happened to mention that she had a door that matched mine laying in the rafters of her garage that I was welcome to have. I couldn't believe my luck! It was the perfect size! And it was already stripped of all of its years of paint! I rushed it home before she could change her mind! :)

The new old door! In this shot you can see I've been doing some repairs—wood glue here and there as well as wood filler in spots.

The door leaned against my kitchen wall for a year until I was finally ready to install it. I've never done this before! It took me a while to work up the nerve and sort out my plan as to how I was going to do this, after all, this was the only antique door I had on hand—no room for error!

In the meantime, I scoured antique stores looking for hinges that matched the ones throughout my house. I picked up these beauties for a couple of bucks! I also picked up a new antique-style doorknob set for the door at Lowes. Now I had all of my parts! Let's get to work!

The paint was on thick and cracked and came off without much encouragement.

Woohoo! A stripped hinge!

And... VOILA!! My new old door to the basement! I did it!! I am so pleased with it!! It even has a lock—THAT WORKS! So exciting... Now I just need to take it back down and get it painted.

My new old door to the basement with gorgeous glass door knobs and working lock!

For a future project, I've got that wretched paneling in my crosshairs... stay tuned...

Blinded with Ingenuity

Today I started my day by shortening the new bamboo blind on the front door. First, I hung the blind on the door backwards so that I could visualize where I wanted the blind to hang when shortened.

The shade came at a length of 72", but I only need about 47". The white line you see here is ideally where I'd like the shade to hang to when finished.

Then I shortened up the cord to the length I wanted. 

This is part of the shade's elevation system found on the backside of the shade.

After that, I took my bottle of Elmer's glue and glued two rows. This was done to keep the strings from unraveling when the bottom of the shade is cut. Once the glue was nice and tacky, I trimmed the blind below the glue line and folded the loose strings up into the tacky glue. 

Finally, I took my hot glue gun and folded and glued the bottom of the shade about an inch, and... VOILA! A shortened shade!

Again, my faithful companion is unimpressed with my skills...

Back to Work!

AT LAST! I finally have time to work on my house again!

Today I started by putting another coat of paint on my front door. After it dried, I pulled the contact paper off of the glass. When we first moved in here years ago, I put contact paper on the glass to keep people outside from being able to see inside; the contact paper provides a frosted glass type of effect. I am still concerned about privacy and plan on putting up some window tint instead.

In the process of removing contact paper. Note the difference between the panes; the far left one still has contact paper on it, whereas the other three have been stripped. 

Sometimes the afternoon sun really comes beating in the front windows, so we really need a way to block out the light, especially for TV viewing. I have admired my neighbor's bamboo window treatment for quite some time and thought I'd do something similar to my door.

This window treatment was just the right width! The length is a bit much though; 72" instead of the 45" I truly need. I am going to shorten it so it's not so bulky! I think I can do this by trimming this to the desired length and folding the raw edge under with a glue gun; kinda looks like that's what the manufacturer did.

Once I got that done, I turned my attention to the staircase again. I started this project yesterday by removing the remaining balusters. Then I sanded the treads and underside of the railing where the old balusters had been.

I brought the balusters in from the porch. Here they are, lined up like little soldiers. Number five gives me a hard time... doesn't want to stand up very well. Soon he won't have a choice!

Here's my youngin' (aka "Big Goonie") counting the balusters, making sure everyone is accounted for.

After many weeks of indecisiveness, I finally decided to paint the railing. Here it is in a brown color that is just slightly lighter and more caramel colored than my dresser I painted earlier this summer.

Remember, brown photographs weird...

This morning I applied the same glazing technique to the railing that I did to my dresser project.

Shot without flash to try to give a better idea of what this actually looks like. Regardless, brown is still difficult to photograph.

Once my railing paint is dry I will need to seal it with a poly-urethane coating so the glazing won't rub off with repeated touching of hands using the railing. After that I think we'll be ready to start fitting and nailing balusters! Check back soon!

Quick! Where's My Brush?!

You know that old saying, "While the hubby's away, the wife will paint!" ...or, something like that (since he whines about the smell of the paint, I usually wait for him to leave before I bust out my brush). Well anyways, that's what happened here—he left for a few hours! :)

Applying wall color to primed wall.

First I applied finish coat to the primed wall behind the front door, and I FINALLY managed to get all of that old paint off of the backside of the front door—on to the primer!

Prime, prime, prime...

Still need to prime woodwork around the door. Maybe tomorrow...

And lastly, I've had my eyes open for a sconce to possibly use in place of that mirror behind the door and came across this one. It is bronze with art glass. What do you think?

Back to the Grind

I've been busy, as of late, working on some computer-related projects that have taken me away from my home improvement projects. These last two days things have slowed down enough for me to find some time to get back to the grind!

First I started with priming the wall behind the front door. I had hoped to prime the door as well, but I don't quite have all of the old paint off yet. A little more pickin' to do...

Then there's the matter of the formerly hidden sconce outlet. Do I find a sconce to put here and put this mirror elsewhere? Or do I simply plaster over it and leave the mirror here? Decisions, decisions...

You can see where the old sconce was mounted to the wall just above the mirror.

FINALLY I was able to get some paint on the woodwork in this corner (at the bottom of the stairs)!

Primer in center of bottom square inset and on door trim.

Primer on door and door trim; finish coat in square insets.

Finish coat on door and surrounding woodwork.

Hopefully I can find some time to put another finish coat of paint on my door and woodwork in the next day or so. Will need to touch up my wall paint too. No biggie...


It looks so different looking at that side of the room tonight! Looking forward to working on that window next! It's coming along! : )

The Red Door

Here's my front door. It could use some freshening up! Wonder how it would look in red?

Oh, how nice!**

Macy is SO unimpressed...

**UPDATE! I went through hell getting this door painted. The paint chip I found that I liked best was by Glidden—a paint I've never used before. Decided to give it a try—HUGE mistake!! The paint didn't cover worth a darn and sagged like CRAZY. It looked absolutely dreadful. Ended up having to sand it all down again and start from scratch. Went with my tried and true Behr paint and ended up with results I should have had in the first place! Never using Glidden again!

One Door Down...

Today I wrapped up my finish coat on the door and baseboards in this little corner of the room. The white doesn't look as vibrant on the door as it does on the fireplace because of the camera's flash and the way it illuminated the scene (hitting the fireplace first), but it's the same paint. Will work on the closet door and trim to the right of this door next!

I'm thinking I'll take off the hinges and hit them with some "Oil Rubbed Bronze" spray paint.

Fireplace and side porch door finished!

Attention! P.I.P.!

That's right, "Priming In Progress"! After many weeks of contemplation, I decided to go ahead and paint the doors white. Having them white will help make them blend into the background so that room furnishings can "be the star", as well as help make the room less confining. Plus, having white doors will help make there be less visual competition, which sounds more calming if you ask me!

Kilz primer applied to the door.

So, it's getting there! I'm hoping to prime the woodwork surrounding the door tomorrow—might even get to some finish coat!

Continued Progress!

I've continued to make progress on my project. I painted the walls I've been working on with a flat finish coat, and have continued chipping away at paint around doors, baseboards, and stair risers.

Here you can see I just have four more risers to go! I am really pleased with how the skirting on the wall is looking too.

Unfortunately my carpal tunnel affliction isn't letting me work on this as much and as aggressively as I'd like. I am hoping to get some primer on these stripped risers this week!


**UPDATE! I bought one final can of that spray on texture I told you about, hoping that the first two I'd gotten were just duds. With this final can, I shook it FOREVER and ran it under some hot water for about 30 seconds or so. At last I was able to get the product to perform the way it was supposed to and actually managed to spray the entire contents onto my walls! I am beyond pleased with the results. It gave me exactly the look I was going for!

Busy, Busy, ...Decisions, Decisions!

Been busy these last couple of days. Yesterday I started scraping one of the doors that leads to the outside. It resembled this door when I started:

Now it looks like this (pardon the tools and my mess!):

I was impressed with how clean it came with just my putty knife and my paint scraper. My neighbor has her doors stripped (with white trim) and I really like the look. I am tempted to have just my two doors that lead to the exterior stained similarly to my neighbor's, but have all of my other doors in the house be painted white (as they currently are). What do you think?

You can see below that I have made some progress on the stairs as well. The skirting is scraping clean better than I expected (where the phone line used to be tacked), and I am almost done scraping all of the risers. You can see that I have also been busy filling nail holes on the risers. Maybe I'll sand and prime those tomorrow.

Today I started off my day by applying the glazing finish to the top of my dresser. I really love how this is turning out! When you look at it up close, it almost seems to resemble woodgrain. You can see I still need to apply the glaze to the vertical surfaces:

Once that was done I primed and painted the newel post in Ultra White. All of my home's doors and trim are currently painted a soft ivory color. I want a fresh clean look, so I am planning on repainting ALL of the woodwork in Ultra White. I think the white trim will make my wall colors look more vibrant and fresh. I'll put a second finish coat on the newel post tomorrow.

I will eventually paint the lower portion of the newel post—need to scrape and prime the quarter-round at the carpet, but this would be much easier to do if the carpet wasn't there. So I'm still working out a plan for this—I'm not quite ready to rip up all of my carpet, but might consider ripping up the perimeter and carpet tack strips so that I can scrape my woodwork throughout the room that's currently embedded in the rug.

And lastly, today I scraped paint off my baseboards and removed layers of painted wallpaper from a small wall. I plan on replacing this purple color with the cream color on the walls in the stairwell. My home has plaster walls and I'll have to do a little bit of wall repair before I'll be ready for paint here.

I'm still pretty stoked about finding those balusters yesterday! They had exactly how many I needed in the sizes I needed and I really like the detail in them—and I got them for a heck of a price! I think I'll paint them white. Such a shame to do since they're lightly stained now and would probably look equally nice with a darker stained finish like I want to use (I love woodgrain!), but I think the contrast of having white balusters with stained treads and railing will look nicer.

Guess we'll see what projects tomorrow brings!