Opening Doors

One of the things I've learned about fixing up an older home is that there is no such thing as a small decision. It seems like every decision has a big, long-term impact.

With the living room, for example, we can't just decide on a style of crown molding for that room. What we choose will eventually be installed throughout the house, so we have to make sure we choose the right thing from the get-go.

Another one of those things is the doors in the house. Most of them have coats upon coats of paint from throughout the years. We had tossed around the idea of stripping them then repainting so that you could see the detail in the doors that is hidden by the coats of paint. But, David had a better idea.

Probably two or three weeks after we moved in, if it was even that long after, David took off the door to our bedroom. I don't think I was here or I might have objected. :)

Regardless, that door was a thorn in my side for weeks. He researched the best way to strip a door and decided to sand it. Countless sheets of sandpaper later, without much progress to show for all his work, he grabbed some paint stripper from Lowe's and tried that instead. Being our usual impatient selves, the first coat of stripper he didn't give long enough to have time to really work on the paint. But the next coat was magic. Imagine that - paint stripper actually strips paint.

He painstakingly worked on this door for a while, off and on. Every morning when I'd take Sagan out to the garage to get in my car to head for daycare, she'd comment on the big mess her daddy was making. (One such mess was caused by him using the belt sander and having some socks lying nearby because he was using those to clean the crevices of the door - the sander ate the sock. I'm still finding sock shreds in the garage.)

But, the result was soooooo worth it.

Instead of painting the door, we decided (actually - I'll give credit where credit is due: David decided) to stain it. It looks amazing!

David used the Early American stain from Minwax Wood Finish.

After one coat of stain, he applied two coats of Minwax Polycrylic to seal the door, protect it, and give it a shine.

We finally have a door for our bedroom again!

I'm super excited about the finished product. The color looks so rich against the white trim in the house. 

So - to my earlier point. We've now decided we would like all the doors in the house to be stained instead of painted (see...one small project equals a decision that impacts the rest of the house). I'm not looking forward to having to do this on the 10,000 other doors in the house. But, we'll get there eventually!

And, on a side note, the electricians did come last week (or was that two weeks ago? Time flies!) and we now have LIGHTS in our living room! Real, live, overhead lights! It's amazing! We have been very busy at work in there. More on that coming soon!