refinishing

One of the 'small' projects I'm really excited about is finally refinishing all of our doors. When we gutted the house, we saved all of the original doors and put them in storage (okay, our garage) until we were ready to start finishing the house. When we cleared out the attic, we were excited to find two more doors up there, that Don's dad told us had been original to the house but removed during one of the family's extensive renovations. They were french doors, solid wood with squares of beveled glass inset. They were painted a hideous shade of teal, but seemed to be in good condition.

The discovery of these doors actually changed our structural plan mid-construction. We had originally planned for the transition from the dining room to the office to simply be a large opening, like the one that goes from dining room to living room. When we found the doors, though, we decided instead to install them as pocket doors dividing the dining room from the office. A header and doorframe had to be built where there had been nothing before. Fortunately nobody grumbled too much.

So now here we are, with a mostly finished house, and it's finally door time! We decided to start with the office doors, both because they're the most complicated and because we'd like to get the main level finished as fast as we can, since it's more 'public' space.

We set up a tent in the backyard, got some sawhorses, and got to work.


The citrus-based nontoxic stripper we used worked wonders! Hardly a hint of the teal remains - or the other three shades we discovered under it. Next up we'll sand the doors down with increasingly fine grits of sandpaper (80, 100, and finally 120) and then prime and paint them to match the rest of the trim in the house. They'll also have to get squared up and have pocket door hardware installed - but after all that effort they are going to look amazing!