Monday, October 28, 2013

Weekend.

Mom's porch art. And a beautiful chestnut tree.

Now that the downtown farmers market has ended, our Saturdays start more slowly. Lee and I both felt a bit under the weather Saturday morning and add in a late night out with friends and it's a good thing we didn't have to be out the door at 8AM to beat the market crowds.

So we lounged. Drank coffee. Ate breakfast. Took Alice to the park near our loft that is overrun with the homeless. Talked a lot about how to remedy that. Saw our neighbors out for a walk and chatted with them.

Then our leisurely morning abruptly ended when reality hit that we aren't even close to finished with our remodel. So the rest of our weekend consisted of working on what will soon become our bedroom door.

My mom and step-dad remodeled their house a few years back and, for some reason, they held onto an old five-paneled farmhouse bedroom door and tucked it in a corner of their garage. It had been gathering dust for the last ten years until I saw it a few weeks ago and had an idea. It was covered in a half-dozen layers of paint but, under the peeling edges, I could see what might just be beautiful wood. So I scraped off a small section, took a few photos, and thought about how I was going to convince Lee that this was our door.

We knew we wanted a reclaimed wood look for our bedroom door but neither of us were thrilled with the idea of paying a whole lot to get it. I also felt tremendous pressure to find something quickly as once the permanent wall goes up, our next step is putting in a door and, if we don't have one, our ever-changing finishing date will move even further away.

Initially Lee was not on board with my idea of using it as our bedroom door, but as the layers of paint came off and the rich, strawberry-blonde wood was revealed, he started to see my vision of that door in the space. So it's a-go!

We've decided to keep some of the original door hardware, which was made by a company called Russell & Erwin. The Conneticut-based company was started in 1839 and then merged with another hardware company in 1902, leaving their name behind in the process. And since my parents house was built in 1903, this beautiful, solid wood door could potentially be over 100 years old.

That will be a much better story of how we came to find our bedroom door than finding it with a hefty price tag in a showroom.

Removing layers of what is probably lead-filled paint. // Old hardware. // Next up? Sanding.

Weekend workouts: None!

2 comments:

  1. That's a great story & the door looks wonderful. Your hard work has paid off. And I hear you on the Saturday mornings! This year we got Lulu into an 11am swim class, so we don't have to rush out so quickly. Last year it was 9:30am & it was such a killer getting to the pool by then (let's not talk about how we're normally up by 6am, but you still don't want to have to get out the door early!)

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  2. The door is going to look great. Glad you did some research on the old lock. We found some original documents for our home. The "subdivision" was dated 1897. The lots were 5 acres each. We found three dates on the original home; 1897, 1903 or 1908. We could take some time and research through the county... I kindof like have a bit of mystery.

    Free door... lots of hard work and elbow grease. Perfect! xoxo

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