stripping

Stripping a Door: Part 1



The prologue of this story is an old door that needed to be stripped. I brought in my amateur stripper, Doc Karen, to serve as my photo model for this two part pictorial. Even anesthesiologists have to moonlight to make ends meet these days <grin>.

I was gratified that she took our tutorial seriously enough to wear her surgical scrubs (mismatched as they were). I guess that makes me "House".



Karen's own house is full of painted architectural woodwork so she wanted to learn how the paint stripping process worked. Since it's her door now I was only too happy to hand her the tools and take my position behind the camera, tucking an occasional dollar bill in her rubber glove and yelling, "Take it all off, baby!" until she threatened to beat me stupid.


A Prodigal Door Returns



Okay, it's a lightweight job and it's not even for my house. But after several months of heads-down work on a software task for my client, The Children's Health Fund, I've got another DIY project. Maybe it will kick me back into gear to finish the cabinet doors and stained glass projects that have been dogging me all summmer. Well, some of it for a lot longer than that.

The job is stripping an old interior door and replacing its center panel with some sort of a screen. Karen is a licensed wildlife rescuer and needs this door so her animal room has adequate ventilation. She wanted to install an aluminum screen door but my relentless bleating about what a hideous scar that would leave on her old house succeeded. I suggested that she instead do some dumpster diving for a 30" door and we'd modify it so it would at least have some architectural integrity with her old federal style house. She agreed.

More importantly, I figured that would keep her busy until sometime next year, when she might forget all about it.




Miscellaneous Before/After Shots



the entry

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The Staircase





When you tackle a home renovation project you'll inevitably question the taste and common sense of the previous owners. This is one example. It’s a hundred year-old, carved red oak staircase obliterated by cheap paint. Something like this would cost at least ten thousand bucks to build from scratch today and it would still lack the same wood quality. Then again, I've never understood why anyone would prefer paint to natural hardwood.

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