Monday, October 7, 2013

0 Entryway Refresh

A few months ago, I purchased a door from Pitsch Salvage, destined to be our new front door.  After doing a bit of initial sanding, it sat in the garage, just waiting for us to get motivated again.  That motivation came from Becky wanting to work on something while she's on maternity leave, and what an amazing job she did.

The main face of the door was pretty trashed, so I sanded it down, but because the panels were in good shape, I really didn't want to open that can of worms. I bought some dark walnut stain that I thought would match the panels, but it was quite a bit darker on the first pass-through.  We decided to leave it with just one coat of stain, since the grain showed through really nicely on sections of the door.


Becky next got to work doing a coat of poly.  We bought a type that is specific to exterior wood doors, so that it would be protected from the elements and hopefully not warp.  4 coats later, the door looked incredible (the pic below is of it not-yet-dry, hence the splotchiness)


The other side was painted, and since the entryway is all painted anyway, we decided to just go with that and just paint it white.  We also decided to finally ditch the blue that was in the entryway and opt for white.  The walls are a tea-stain, so the white helps the windows and door stand out, but in a subtle way.


I got to work adding the old knob back on (it's way too cool to replace), and expanding the 1.5" hole to 2" so the deadbolt fit.  Just a note on that - if you are trying to make a hole bigger using a hole saw with your drill, you have to first clamp down a piece of wood over the hole (making sure to mark your center), otherwise the bit will jump all over the place.  The center drill bit in the hole saw is what anchors it to keep it from moving, so as it anchors to the wood you've clamped over top, it creates a template hole so it won't jump once it hits the actual door.

I also cut a new hole for the deadbolt to go into, since the old one was lower than this door.  Then I trimmed a little off the bottom, cut out spots for the hinges, and hung it.


We do want to get a darker deadbolt to match, and replace the side lights with tempered glass.  The weird little peephole on the left is bothersome, and that intercom doesn't go do anything.

The interior was also a dramatic change:


There's still remnants of the blue on the windows on the right, but we'll be getting rid of that right away.  I also want to replace the stock nipple lights with something with more character, now that the door is no longer stock.  It makes me much happier.  I like the elements of this house to have a little history to them, and a standard door from a big box store just didn't fit.

While Becky was painting, I was adding a couple little touches around the house.  Hung Becky's Dobro in the music room, along with some Ikea CD jacket frames I got from a garage sale:



And, per Becky's suggestion, added an old "GENTLEMEN" plate on the door to the Studio/Workshop:


There will be more of this to come.  As we finally finish rooms and live in them for a while, we get the feel for what sort of artwork they need.

Next up, I finally start the stair railings.
 

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