This weekend I finally finished the first in the great door reclaimation project, our bedroom door, which I’ve been working on since the Martin’s were here last. All the doors are now down but the most important one (the bathroom of course). All I can say is that doors are a lot bigger than the trim I’ve been stripping so far, and that there is a lot more of them than you think there is. And they have two sides. Ugh. Far more time consuming than my previous projects.
Although it is just the two of us, in our house we are so close to your neighbors that you need the privacy a door can give you. Especially since we have no blinds up since we’ve taken down all of the trim that you could hang them on. We have one spot in our bedroom that you can stand in to get dressed in without being in the line of sight of either of our neighbors, and we’ve definitely gotten tired of sneaking around in our own house.
I started by removing all the hardware from the door and throwing it in a bucket, screws and all, since I didn’t want to lose any of it. Then it was time to bring out the trusty ole’ heat gun and to strip the paint off the flat outside and inside portion of the panels on the side of the door that faced into the bedroom. I got this done in about two sittings (or hunchings). The edges of the panels took considerably longer. I couldn’t really go at it with the metal scraper because it was too easy to dig into and gouge the door. I finally found a use for all those chemical strippers on this part of the door, and they worked pretty well at getting a bulk of the paint off. I still can’t stand the smell and it is much messier compared to the heat gun, but seems to be quicker and less damaging to the door. After getting most of the paint off with the chemical strippers, I went over it scraping with a small screw driver the spots of paint that were still left, and using the Dremmel in some places. (more…)
