Painting the Front Door

I'm feeling the need to work to make this old house of ours a bit more welcoming.  Almost nothing we have done during our renovation has been purely esthetic ... it's been 10 years of time and money spent mostly on things like roofing, electrical, plumbing, plaster, blah, blah, blah ... very little of which gives a satisfied feeling of immediate gratification.  Here is what I decided to work on this week.

Our entrance could be really lovely ... we have a huge front door and beautiful leaded glass.  I hate to admit this, but the only thing I have done to the front door in whole time we have owned this place is wash off spiderwebs and dirt from time to time.  Here is the view of the door in question, before I did anything to it yesterday morning.

It looks okay from a distance, so let's go a little closer and see the real story ... grime and flakes and places where the paint is completely worn through. 

Yesterday morning, I gathered my tools and jumped right into the job.  First, I scraped off any loose paint.  I thought about grabbing my heat gun and stripping all the paint off the door and starting fresh (like I have done on the moldings inside the house), but I decided to work with what's on the door already.  Something inside me felt a bit guilty about the potential to wipe out the door's 160+ years of history.

After I scraped and sanded, this is what I had.  I have to keep reminding myself ... it has to get worse before it can be better.

Next, I took my trusty can of Kilz and finished work day #1 by applying a thorough coat of primer to the whole door ... two coats to all of the spots of bare wood.

Normally when I paint a door, I remove the knob and any other hardware.  In this case, all I could get off  was the door knocker.  The knocker's striker plate is stuck, and I can't figure out how to remove the keyhole or the handle for the rim lock.  With all of that still in place, I figured it would be silly to remove the doorknob ... so I taped around everything and called it good.

If you look closely at the reflection in the sidelights in the photo above, you can see why my workday was cut short ... that sky was really black and ominous and it rained and stormed for the rest of the day.  Not good painting weather.

Day 2 dawned dreary and rainy, and I had little hope for finishing my door project.  By mid-morning, though, the rain stopped and the sky cleared ... and it was dry enough by early afternoon to start applying color to the door.

Choosing that color has been a long process.  I knew that I wanted some sort of greenish blue, but it took a while to find the exact right one that had presence and depth, and that coordinated well with the brownish orange of our brick home.  My choice is Farrow and Ball's 'Oval Room Blue', color matched in Valspar Ultra Premium, in a satin finish.

This choice of color has not come without a little bit of drama.  Two of our daughters have expressed their displeasure at the fact that this house won't have a red door ... our houses have ALWAYS had red doors, and the girls have done everything they can to try to convince me not to paint the door of this house blue.  To be honest, I thought about red.  I brought home color chips and tried to convince myself that I could be happy with some sort of red on this door ... but I couldn't do it. 

Also, as far as I can tell, this door has always worn some sort of white paint.  There are layers of white, cream, beige, more white ... and nothing with any color to speak of.  Part of me hesitated to make the leap to a new color.  After I thought about it for a while, I decided to go ahead with the blue ... I realized that I have always made each renovation decision out of a profound respect for this house, this decision included.  (The white paint is still there for others to find, if they choose to go looking.)

Back to the play by play ....

The primer raised the grain of the wood a bit, so I gave the door a quick once-over with a fine grit sanding block.  This gave me a silky smooth surface, and will make the finished paint job look a whole lot nicer.  As I applied the first few strokes of 'Oval Room Blue', I knew immediately that I had made the correct choice.

What do you think?

I had company while I was painting.  Alice and Dorothy were right there, keeping an eye on things.  Like the good housecats they are, neither of them had so much as an inclination to go any closer toward the door.

This is where things stand as of now.  I'm not finished yet.  I have some cracks to caulk and another coat of paint to apply, but I am thrilled with how the project is turning out so far. 

Hello, blue door.  I'm very glad to see you!

It Started With a Little Pinhole

One of the harsh realities of living in an old house is this ...  other people have lived here, 163 years worth of people in our case, and some of the things these people did while working on the house were stupid.

Yesterday afternoon, a pipe in the wall of our basement workshop sprang a leak.  Fortunately, The Husband heard it, as the stream of water was spewing from the pipe onto the basement floor.  Please forgive me for beginning the photos of this adventure somewhere in the middle ... we were too busy scurrying around and sopping up water to fully document the beginning of this story. 

Here is the offending pipe.  When this process started, the pipe was buried underneath a layer of plaster and metal lath.  We had to demo all of this to get to the pipe.  (After we shut off the water to the house to help stem the spewing.)

The arrow marks the hole in the pipe.

The hole was caused by a stupid mistake made by a plumber 40 years ago.  He must have run out of copper pipe brackets (the ones used to secure the pipe to the wall) and he used one made out of another metal in this spot.  Since that time, the dissimilar metals have been cooking some sort of chemistry experiment in this spot, wearing away the copper until a hole formed.  If this hadn't been really thick old-school copper pipe, the hole probably would have taken a lot less than 40 years to develop.  Look at how the bracket is all corroded and barely recognizable.

Anyway, we had demo work to do to expose this pipe.  There were three layers of plaster on this wall.  The first two layers, the original lime plaster over the brick walls and another layer of plaster installed when the kitchen was brought into the house and plumbing was installed in the 1930s or 40s, weren't a problem.  The topmost layer of plaster, and two layers of wire lath installed when the house was remodeled in the 1960s, embedded the pipes into the wall and made it very difficult to access the pipe.

We had already removed the plaster on the wall below the level of the pipes last year when we took out the remnants of the basement kitchen to convert the room into a workshop.  What was left at that time was the difficult part of the job, removing the plaster around the pipes, so we decided to do it another time.  (To see photos of what the room looked like at that point, click HERE.)

 

Hopefully, this little diagram helps you understand what I'm talking about.

 In order to expose the pipe, it took me about two hours with a hammer and a flat bar, chipping and prying plaster and wire lath off the top of the wall and the edge of the ceiling.  It took me so long, because I had to work very carefully around all of the other pipes.  After I finished, the floor looked like this.

Towels to sop up the puddle, a bucket to catch the spewing, and lots of plaster debris.

With the pipe right against the brick wall like it is, we couldn't use a regular tubing cutter to cut the pipe.  Couldn't use a reciprocating saw either, because the other pipes are too close to the one we needed to cut.  Sometimes when working on an old house, it's important to think outside the box ... so The Husband cut the pipe with our trusty Dremel tool.

I'm standing below, spot-lighting the area so he can see what he's doing.

We had to cut out a seven-foot section of the pipe, because there was one other spot on it that looked a bit questionable.

It would have been really difficult to do a traditional fix on this pipe (sweating on copper coupler fittings), because the pipe is right against the brick wall.  This is where technology came to our rescue, in the form of the most wonderful press-in-place fittings, called 'sharks'. 

We cut the new piece of pipe to fit, and used a 'shark' on each end to patch it into place.

Left side.

Right side.

And now we have  nice new run of bright, shiny, and hole-free water pipe!!

All that was left for us to do was to turn the water back on, pray our fittings didn't leak (they didn't!!), and sweep up the mess.

I checked numerous times during the day today, and The Husband did too, and everything has remained completely dry. 

Renovation of Bathroom #2 ... A Sneak Peek

For the past two weeks, I have been pushing hard to finish another bathroom.  This one was completely gutted ... so we have new walls, floor, ceiling ... EVERYTHING.  I think I have another week's worth of work till I can close the door and be completely finished.  I'm so excited about the way this project is coming out, I have to give everyone a sneak peek at some of my progress.

Pinwheel Mosaic Floor Tile.

Gray Floor Grout.

White Subway Tile in the Shower ...

and on the Walls.

A full post will be coming in a few days, once I grout the rest of the tile and set the countertop.  Stay tuned for before and after photos and details on everything that went into this project.  (Sorry to rush off like this ... I have to go upstairs now and set the last of the tile trim pieces.)