Gladys Gets Ready for the Beach

The weather has turned cool again which means that we cannot repair the stucco on the house or paint outside since temperatures for the next week are predicted to drop into the 40s.  Believe me, after sub-zero temperatures for a great deal of the time that we were in Wisconsin for the holidays, 40s seems very tropical, but it is still too cold for patching or for painting.

The temperatures outside, however, will not stop us from continuing to restructure Gladys on the inside.  One of the 1960s "shabby" parts of Gladys still are her original hollow-core, flat slab doors.  Through the years moisture has done lots of damage, helping the outer layers to delaminate and to peel up.  Creative cutting, glueing, and painting of the doors these past two years are all that has kept them intact.  Now is the time to move on to a better line of doors.

When we were in Florida in November, we ordered out all new interior doors and closet doors.  Once these are installed, we literally will have replaced every door and window in this house.  The new doors are the same design as the sliding pocket door and laundry room/ garage door that we installed last year, so each room will have that beach/ Key West decor to it because of the doors.

A corner of the living room now holds the guest room,
bathroom, and master bedroom doors.

Yesterday, Rick and Steve (thank you again, Steve, for doing the heavy lifting with Rick!) went to the millwork shop to pick up six pre-hung doors, one door slab for the master bathroom pocket door, and four mammoth eight-foot doors for the two bedroom closets.  We did not want to store the doors in the garage because of the moisture in the air, so we got creative about finding corners in the living room, dining room, and Florida room to house them until we could get them installed.

An empty corner in the dining room was
a great place to store the small closet doors.

Since the bedroom closet doors are too tall, they had to go on their
sides in the Florida room until Rick can modify them for
their eventual purpose in the bedrooms.

After running around this morning picking up needed supplies, including LOTS of shims, we started the demolition part of the door project.  The old door frames and casings all are covered, we strongly suspect, with lead paint. Rather than strip that all down and expose both of us to further health issues, we decided to remove them all and to start fresh.

The guest room and hall closet doors are
out, leaving lots of dust and debris to
pick up.

The first door Rick tackled was by far the worst door, condition-wise, in the house. He removed the guest room door and made short work of the frame. We were shocked to find that the door frames were not nailed into the frame of the house.  No nails penetrated the frame at any point. The only thing that held the door into position was the casing around each frame. Wow! I am surprised the doors have stayed in place all of these years, and further surprised that they opened and closed without problems.  Talk about a wish and a prayer construction!

After we removed the guest room door, we moved the new door into position and spent about the next two hours with shims, levels, and many long nails making sure the door was firmly attached to Gladys. While the original carpenters used no nails, Rick is following the Anderson building motto of "If one nail will do, two or three are better."  I'll let him patch the nail holes in these babies. I will admit, though, that if an earthquake tries to take down Gladys, I will be confident that a door frame is as good a place as any to be.

Our plan is to hang all of the pre-hung doors and then to take the doors out, to paint them on the flat, and to paint the frames where they hang.  I will be so happy to eventually have new doors where the hinges, handles, and strike plates are not covered in layers of carelessly slopped paint.

Rick works on removing the last of the debris
after removing the bathroom door. The hall storage
closet, opposite the bathroom, also awaits a new door.

Once the guest room door was in place, we spent the rest of the afternoon removing the doors and frames on the hallway coat closet, the hallway storage closet, and the main bathroom door.  The bathroom is going to be a challenge since the casing for the door actually went behind a corner of the vanity, and the walls of the bathroom are extra thick with plaster and tile.  Eventually we will gut that room, but for now that is both a monetary and a time expense that we do not want to face.

Not having a bathroom door when the room can be clearly seen from the living room will present a few privacy challenges, but we have the second bathroom in the master bedroom, so we will survive.  By this time tomorrow evening, we hope to have the new bathroom and at least one of the closet doors installed.

The closets have not been painted in many years, so we bought paint today to make sure that everything gets a fresh coat of paint and gets reconfigured to our liking before we call this project complete.

The new guest room door from the hall...

and from the inside of the room. 

Even though nothing is painted, we are pleased with how the one door that we have hung looks from both inside the room and from the hallway.  In our house in Wisconsin, we replaced all of the old, flat doors with six-panel doors, and those doors totally changed the whole look of the house.  We expect that giving Gladys some fancy new doors will make her one step closer to being a classy old lady heading for the beach.