Two Weekends, Two Doors

Doors really take a lot of time. Last weekend I put a new front door on one of the rental units. If you include the time it took to purchase the door and paint it, the whole thing took me 5 or 6 hours. Granted, I’m not the speediest worker in the world, but doors are a lot of work. You must mortise hinges and install locksets, and of course they never fit perfectly the first time. There is always some trimming or shimming that needs to be done. It didn’t help matters that the apartment was on the second floor.

This weekend I turned my door hanging attention back to the bathroom. I’ve been working on this door for a good 3 or 4 weeks now. The door was in reasonably good shape, given its age, but it still had some issues. The main issue was the paint. It had to all come off. There was a lot of it and it was chipping pretty bad. I’m really not in to the whole shabby chic thing.



The only other issue with it was one of the panels was cracked. It was right along the edge and it was a pretty clean break so I filled it with some poly urethane caulk. The wood on the panels gets very thin where it meets the rails and styles of the door. There really wasn’t much to glue. Plus, it would have been hard to get the glue in there and get it to stay while it set.

Once I got all of the pant off it came time to hang it. Naturally, the old hinge mortises on the door did not match up with the old hinge mortises on the door jamb I reused. Not that I expected them too, but one can hope. It’s probably just as well, because no doubt the screw holes would have been stripped.

And of course, things did not quite match up. This is a 100+ year old door being hung in an 80+ year old door jamb that was reused and installed by an armature carpenter. I really never expected the door to fit on the first try and it didn’t. It wasn’t too bad. A few minor trims later and the door was swinging effortlessly on its reproduction steeple tipped hinges.



I decided to get classy with the door knobs considering the bathroom came out so classy. I’m not sure where I got these. They probably came on one of the doors I bought some place. You can see the image of the old face plate. I’m not sure if that big oval style pre-dates my house or if it came later.



I also added a little deadbolt type lock. This was an Ebay purchase. Next will be to remove all of the hardware, take the door off the hinges, and paint it. I want to clean the door knobs and face plates as well. It probably won’t be until Wednesday or so when I get it back up, but this puts me one giant step closer to finishing the bathroom.