Starting to Focus on Finishing Touches
Rebuilding a Beautiful, Vacant Historic Detroit Home (Episode 47)
Doors, Doors, and more Doors!
These past couple weeks have been largely focused on our doors. We have 4 interior doors on the first floor, and rather than having them painted with the rest of our doors, we decided that we’d like to try and strip, sand, and re-stain these doors to return them to their original state.
Brandon worked to get our leaded glass vestibule door stripped and about 1/2 of another door, but we were quickly running out of steam. Our wonderful neighbors Veronica and Mary overheard us talking about stripping the doors and Veronica burst into action and offered to help us with the remaining doors. She and Mary had stripped and re-stained over 15 doors in their own home which turned out great. We dropped the remaining doors off and only a week or two later, we received them all back, perfectly stripped, sanded, and stained… but still needing a final protective coating.
After some research, Brandon decided to use Shellac on the doors rather than a polyurethane coating. Shellac is an age old material, derived from a lac bug, and was the dominant wood finish choice until lacquer in the 1930s. It can be bought in cans and brushed on. It dries quickly, is fairly easy to apply, doesn’t have an intrusive odor, and is a completely naturally derived product!
Brandon set up saw horses in the basement and even after a single coat, the doors felt smooth and the color in the stain started to pop. He lightly sanded with ultra fine steel wool between coats, and after about 3 coats each, the doors were ready to be rehung! Using a nice, new brush was key to getting a smooth coat, as well as working quickly and lightly without going over the same spot twice in one coat.
Front Door Blues
So our front door is in rough shape. With 5 or so previous coats of paint, none of them really sanded or painted well in between, it meant that the door has a lot of issues. Pooling and dripping paint under 2 or 3 newer coats, flaking and peeling paint, and chipped areas mean that I’ve got my work cut out for me.
I attempted to strip one panel to get an idea of the work laying before me, and quickly realized that stripping was probably not the right move. Unlike most of our neighbors, our front door was never originally stained, which meant that stripping the initial coat of lead-based paint would be a real doozy. Without a layer of stain, the paint adheres much more aggressively to the wood and makes it incredibly difficult to strip. I learned that the original color of the door was a deep emerald green, which was a color I wanted to investigate for repainting, and having painted about 6 green samples and as many red samples of color, I think I’ve found the right green for the job.
I got to work with scraping out old caulk from the trim around the door as well as stripping some of the remaining paint from the stone surround. Then, the sanding began. I of course picked the hottest July 4th week to tackle this door and worked every day outside in the 95 degree heat sanding the crap out of the panels, detailing, and then the surrounding flats. After about 3 days of sanding, I placed one coat of grey primer on the door to take stock of my progress… seeing the door all in one color again is really helpful to find the remaining flaws. After another full day of sanding and then Bondo repairs of other flaws, I was ready to do another coat of primer.
Christian offered to come by the house with a sheet of plywood to help us board up the door so that I could most it out of the heat and into the basement to work. He did a great job securing the entry and now I can more easily work in the air conditioning! I set up some plastic on the walls, ceiling, and floors to create a mini painting area and set up my HVLP paint sprayer. Putting on the second coat of primer went much smoother with the sprayer than by hand out in the heat. Now I am ready to do another pass at sanding and filling problem spots, and then I think I’ll be ready to start laying down the final coats of our Aura Grand Entrance Paint with the sprayer.
Curtains and Other Finishing Touches
With a visit from my mom, I had some more help with some of the small details around the house. She helped me go through some of our remaining clutter to organize tools, bag clothes and other items for donation, and clean our last remaining guest bedroom so that we could potentially have someone sleep there. We also spent a bunch of time cleaning and throwing things out from our basement, which still has things as well as old damaged shelving remaining from the previous owners. We filled the curb with junk for bulk pickup and it was so nice getting the basement back to a semi-usable state.
We bought some shelving for one of our linen closets so that I could organize bed sheets, towels, and other items and we also finally bought a mattress for the bed that Brandon’s mother so graciously gave to us. After all that, we finally hung the curtains in the guest bedroom, as well as some curtains in our master bathroom! Brandon and I took the time to put together an IKEA buffet as well that we are using as a bar.
Rugs too!
We’ve spent some time working on finding rugs these past few weeks as well. Finding affordable quality rugs is so difficult, especially when so many options are online where you cant see, feel and touch them. We haven’t sorted every room out, but we finally located rugs for our master bedroom and lounge, which have made a big difference in helping the rooms seem more finished! I’ve now placed orders on additional curtains for our Living Room and Master Bedroom, which had the added challenge of a bay window to solve.
Hanging Art
Finally, yesterday Brandon and I finally got the call that the artwork I brought back from my trip to Shanghai with my mother was finally framed! After bringing it home and propping it up on a few walls around the house we decided on a location and hung it. The piece is part of a collection called “Stop Thinking” by Wei Ping.
Up Next…
In the coming weeks, we’ll continue to work on our front door (hopefully I can finish it!), our garage finally gets a new opener, and hopefully a new driveway/patio this month!
Our journey isn’t over
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