Finishing Details

Lots happened today. We were seriously motivated and got a lot done. We have arbitrarily decided on September first as move-in day and September 13th as House-warming party day so having specific dates has certainly helped us move faster.

As I am extremely clumsy, I am not allowed a paint brush where a spill would be difficult to compensate for such as near a finished floor. But what I love to do and most people do not like is to sand and finish the floors. So while everyone else was in on the paint party. I was working on the stairs.

After we stained the floor 2-3 days ago, we took off our booties and then walked on the stairs. My sister was wearing shoes, I was wearing socks. Apparently the little flimsy booties they sell at the big box stores are not sufficient to prevent stain from bleeding through. I need to remember this. I sanded the stairs with 4 grits - 60-80-100-120 with exhaustive vacuuming in between. Tedious work, but the stairs are so smooth now. I am very happy. I will stain them tomorrow.

I have protected the already painted balusters with homemade baluster condoms. We will see how they work to prevent stain from getting on the paint.

Then I stained the bottom newel post. I think it looks really nice. I can't wait to get the finish on the stairs. They will be so beautiful.

We had trouble finding a stain to match the front inside of the mahogany door. The wood trim is some kind of pine (radiata pine, maybe?) that doesn't take stain as well as we would like. So the mahogany stain that we used on the door would not work. John noticed that the semi-transparent stain on the porch looked like it would match. Crazy. No way would that work, but it did. In fact, it looks great. He covered it with 2 coats of polyurethane.

John got the shoe mould done on the porch and in both bathrooms. We initially thought about painting it, but decided on staining it instead. It looks great.

This is the porch shoe mould. 

Downstairs bathroom shoe mould. It looks great with the tile. 

Anyway, a very productive day. We are getting somewhere and soon John should be in his cozy little energy-efficient home. 

Thank you for taking a look at the progress on John's house.

Mahogany Door - Almost Finished Refinishing

After several weeks of serious sanding, followed by stain and several coats of spar polyurethane, the door is essentially finished. I think there are a couple of spots that need to be touched up, but I think it looks great.

There were a few blobs of bristles and thickened varnish that I lightly sanded off with 600 grit sandpaper. They need a new coat of varnish (polyurethane) on top. 

Here is the panel that I sanded. The color really looks more like the color in the first photo. But it is so much prettier than it was when we got it.

John is ready for it to be put up in the doorway, but Carlton is going to wait because people will be bringing drywall, wood flooring, tubes to blow in cellulose, and other supplies through the door and he doesn't want the door to get dinged up.

Should anyone decide to refinish a door like this, the key to it is sanding, sanding. The panel corners, moulding are extremely difficult. We really like the Dremel tool detail sander. It made it so much easier to get to those difficult spots in a timely fashion without KILLING our fingers. 

Refinishing the Mahogany Door - Sanding Done

John finished sanding the door today. Here is putting the finishing touches on the door.

This is the panel that I sanded.

The stained door. The stain is uneven partly because the grain is different on each panel. Not much you can do about that. It is still going to be beautiful. The bottom panels are not purple. That's just my iPhone photography that makes it look purple.

Refinishing the Mahogany Door

The third purchase that I've made from Craigslist is this mahogany door with sidelight. We saw it advertised and John loved it so we bought it. I didn't negotiate as I should have because I just didn't know. The front of the door was seriously damaged from the sun (which was not shown in the pictures online and the seller even loaded the door with the bad side down so we didn't see it until we got home. Dumb, I know). I did not take a picture of it, but it almost looked burned because of how cracked the finish was.

So that, of course, means that we have to refinish the door. Well, mostly John has to refinish the door. He was able to refinish the sidelights and the door frame a couple of weeks ago so Carlton and Myron could finish the putting up the Hardieboard siding. John is not completely satisfied with the job he did, but I think it looks great. I'll try to add a photo tomorrow.

Anyway, now we are down to finishing the door. You can see that it is pretty complicated with raised panels, moulding and curves. John has taped the glass in the center to protect it from his protracted efforts to get the old finish off the door.

Here is a photo of one of the panels that is almost completely sanded. You can see where the stain and old finish hide in the corners.

After John applied stripper, then he went after the stain and residual finish with the following tools: wire brush, tiny pieces of sandpaper, his knife, Rockwell oscillating tool, sanding sponges, and a Dremel tool with a detail abrasive brush.

All of them have been useful, but the winner is:

The Dremel with a detail abrasive brush. The picture shows one that has been seriously worn down. They aren't cheap, but this gets into the corners better than anything else we have found.

I think the door will be beautiful. Also, it will be in a much more protected location at John's house. It's located at the entrance to the enclosed porch on the shady side of  the house.

You can see a little bit of the sidelights and door frame on the porch. The light colored paint at each corner of the window trim is primer. We're still working on colors.

I'll try to post again this weekend as I'm only working for brief period on Sunday.