The Saga of the Doors

I figured that it's about time I start posting pictures of the new house.  My blisters have healed, my lungs have cleared of sawdust and paint, my sanity has pretty much returned.  Let's start our journey with what had become the bane of my existence with this remodel... THE DOORS.  {hiss} {hiss}

When we bought this house everything that could be the color of wood was: doors, railings, banisters, window sills, door moulding, you name it it was wood colored. Oh, look you can see the pretty orginial green carpet too...

Next came sanding the doors to remove the shiny finish.  Ben and I thought it would be really classy to stain the doors a dark wood color, think expensive Park City houses.  I even got little sister to help in the fun.  Here's where the problems started...

 LESSON 1: If you are going to restain (not paint) wood doors to a darker wood finish DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT use what is called a mouse sander that has a point at the end.  It WILL leave swirly gouges in your wood that show up something fierce when you stain them. 

At this point I was oblivious to that fact though.  Soon I will learn...

After sanding I cleaned the doors throughly with tacky cloth, so as not to leave dust. Then I went to town staining.  I only got three doors stained that one particular day.  I arrived the next morning and saw this.  The doors were obviously uneven (due to an uneveness in sanding).  And there were swirly marks throughout. UGH. They looked HORRIBLE.  So we tried taking the stain off that night with this goopy goop (nice technical name).  Instead of stripping the stain it left globs that I had dig out of the crevices with a screwdriver. 

*SIGH*

LESSON 2: Mouse Sander is BAD. Did I mention this in Lesson 1?  Bonus Lesson: Goopy Goop does not working on taking stain off doors.

And how on earth was I going to get out those dang swirly marks?

MORE SANDING.

I sanded for HOURS.  Literally HOURS.  I had to sand out all those dang swirly marks and that was A LOT. As you can see I am using the square sander.  Mouse sander got banished.

 LESSON 3: Sanding for 10 hours straight, 2 day in a row is a lot for a little sander. 

My dear little square sander died that night. Oh, and I this is when I developed a hate relationship with sanding.

The next step I didn't take any pictures of.  I was so disgusted with the doors that I didn't want to document it.  I brought all the doors inside.  Note to self, real wood doors are heavy.  Now that all the swirly marks had been taken out and basically all the doors were now down to the virgin state it was time to try this whole staining process again.  I obviously hadn't learned yet.

LESSON 4: Doors need to be sanded evenly otherwise the stain takes differently. 

Parts of the doors were darker than others.  Mostly in the ridges where I could not sand with the power sander otherwise I would sand the ridge right out.

I had been working on these $@&#* doors for two weeks now.  Ben and I decided that it just wasn't working and that we were simply going to paint them white.

Enter my new best friend Ryobi.  If you have to paint large areas a paint sprayer is the ONLY way to go.  I had been using this little feller to paint all the baseboards and door trims.  Might as well try it with the doors!

First step was the prime all the doors.  They were a very dark stain, so I knew I had to prime them to decrease that darkness if I was going white.  Did I mention I had been also painting for the past two weeks?

This is the start of week three.  I had white paint boogers all week.  I would drive home in my underwear because my clothes were covered in a fine dust of paint particles.  I confined the door painting to one room becasue the rest of the walls in the house were being painted.  It took one solid week to paint the doors white.  My daily schedule was insane to accomodate this.  I would be at work at 8am. UGH.  I normally don't roll in until around 9:00am, so this was a stretch.  I would work until 4pm.  Then I would go home and type.  I would have to be done typing by 6:30/7:00 so that I could get in two to three hours of work at the new house.  Most nights I would not get home from the new house until 10/11:00pm.  I was usually exhausted.  And had NO social life.

LESSON 5: Bring a change of clothes ALWAYS, so that you don't have to drive home in your undies.

And be sure to have good ventilation.  And spray evenly.

And finally, without further ado I present my {lovely white doors}...

Now, rehanging them was another story.  Overall I am glad we ended up with white doors.  It makes everything so much brighter. 

And that my friends, is the Saga of the Doors.