Doors

With most of the bathroom work done, the last remaining pieces are finishing up the doors. I start with the entry door to the bathroom which gets its final coat of Waterlox, this time with the matte sheen. After that dries, I reattach the hinges. I need to file down some of the hinge cuts in the door and jam because I had rebuilt them using wood epoxy. Once I get the hinges sitting nicely, I drill pilot holes and then hang the door on the frame. I re-use most of the original slotted screws for this task.

Drilling holes for the hinge screws.

The door is hung without any issues, but then I notice that the mortise lock I restored was put back together backwards. The catch is orientated in the wrong direction so I’ll need to remove that and flip over to the opposite direction. The other issue I have is that the small wood pieces that cover the keyhole and doorknob holes don’t quite match in color. For these pieces I only used boiled linseed oil, but they could use a coat of glaze or stain to make them match the door color better. I’ll apply that next week.

After the main door is done, it’s more work on the built-in doors. The small doors get a coat of shellac and then after that dries, 2 coats of Waterlox (of course waiting 24 hours between coats). Next weekend they can get the final matte coat and then they’ll be ready to hang.

After a shellac coat.

After a 2nd coat of Waterlox. High sheen and that will be reduced to matte with the 3rd coat.

The drawers look OK but they are still a tad too light compared to the rest of the woodwork. The drawers don’t seem to absorb my homemade stain very well so I go with Mohawk’s glaze for another color coat on the drawers. I use a brush to grain them a little bit and the glaze gives the drawers a darker color. I’ll leave these to dry and start applying Waterlox next week.

Drawer with glaze applied.

The last bathroom task is starting to plan out the placement of hardware. I bought a reproduction toilet paper holder and since the bathroom is so small we try to get this placed in a spot that has minimal amount of obstruction.

Testing the spot for the toilet paper holder.

Outside of the bathroom, I start plugging away at the cottage to start prepping for rental season. Overall things are in good shape and mostly just need cleaning. The living room has a couple of repairs needed. The first is replacing a light. The existing light is a bargain basement Home Depot special, so I get something a little more stylish, but as we remove the old fixture we see it was installed without a junction box and grounding wire. I don’t know how bad that is, but it seems wrong to have the wires just running loose through the ceiling with metal screws right next to them holding the light bracket in place. Since I don’t like to mess with electric work, I close that back up and get in touch with the electrician.

The light was held in place by the bracket, but no junction box. Bracket was screwed directly into the ceiling.

Another repair is to the couch. Last year I noticed one of the cross braces bulging out against the back of the couch. This year a second brace has also come loose and both are pushing out against the fabric. At some point the wood will rip the fabric and things will only get worse so I take a look to secure the braces back in place. I notice the wood is cheap plywood and it was only held in place by 2 staples. I use some L braces to secure the brace back into place. The couch wasn’t overly expensive, but it wasn’t dirt cheap either. It’s amazing how flimsy the construction is when you take a look under the hood to see how it’s put together.

Securing a wood cross brace with some metal L braces.