I promised pictures, so here's pictures...
Here are the mostly-finished door frames. It took us three long days of stripping the paint off of them, then sanding them with heavy grit, then another sanding of fine grit sandpaper. Once that was done we were able to stain them with the cherry wood stain. They took in the stain beautifully, and will be lovely when they are all finished. They just need a couple of coats of varethane. I love how they turned out. If you ever have antique wooden doorframes, my suggestion is DON'T PAINT THEM! It's a royal pain to get that stuff off of them. (Please ignore the dust on my new shiney floor. Remodels are a dusty business!) We plan to continue refinishing the trim going up the stairs and into the hall - but not until this mess is done.
Tom and I spent a day stripping and sanding paint off of ONE door. It was insane trying to get the paint out of all the nooks and crannies. There are still little bits on it where it's been indented and beat up a bit. I told him that was the style for old wooden doors. I don't think he was buying that theory. The other thing that made it so hard to get this done was the farmers decided to have their fields crop-dusted the same day. So we'd be sanding away and a crop-duster plane would fly right over the top of us, dropping fertilizer or pesticides on us with the over spray. I think the pilot must have been enjoying the spectacle of Tom and I running for the door to get in the house every time he flew over. That's been our luck so far with this project. Always something to set us back.
This was a YAHOO-EEE!!! moment... the first piece of sheetrock goes up. At this point we were both thinking, "Yay! We're finally moving forward" Little did we know...
To the eye, in most light, the door frames look a deep cherry wood red. When we painted it on the paneling and trim, it was brown. So I tried adding some red mahogony and redwood stain. When it was out in the direct sunlight, it looked like a perfect match. Once we got it inside... in the daylight it was okay (sort of), but when it got dark and we had the light on it looked pretty bad. I think we should have stuck with the 'brownish' color. We may have to redo that corner - which is quite a distressing and disgusting thought for both of us - a day and some really nice wood wasted.
This is after Tom got it all finished. It is where the pellet stove will go. If you look to the lower right, there's a piece of paneling with stain on both ends. The top is the original cherry wood. The bottom is the darkened cherry wood. I think that's what we should have gone with... and what we will probably have to re-do that corner in. So sad because Tom did an awesome job on building the trim and mantle in the corner. We may try to just sand it all - and if the red comes off, try to restain with the dark cherry wood. I haven't decided what color to paint the walls after we tape, mud and texture. I think I am leaning towards a light almond color.
You might be asking yourself "Whoa, what's this? This wasn't in the remodel budget!" Well, when you spend all week working on the house, making filthy dusty clothes, not taking the time to get the laundry done... then Sunday morning you go to start a load and find that your washing machine (that was only a year old - mind you) has thrown some bearings... you start to panic. I have to admit, we bought the Maytag last year off of a 'Ding and Dent' showroom floor, and were informed that it had been returned by it's previous owner. I guess that's what you get when you try to save some money. Either that, or we are really tough on washing machines! So here's the new Wirlpool set. We didn't really need a new dryer, but it was a good deal so we took it. Tom took the time to build the nice 'pedestal' for them, which the dog food fits nicely under. I sure hope we can get a few years out of these guys.
Well, that's my life story for the week and I'm sticking to it!
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