We removed the door to the basement -- oh, I can't remember how long since. It is probably original to the house and doubtless coated with lead paint, and currently lies on its side in the garage. We always had to leave it open to grant the cats access to the litter boxes in the basement, and after we removed the hanging peninsula from the kitchen (I may write about that someday soon), the door half-blocked the entrance "arch" to the semi-desconstructed 1950s kitchen. (HomoDommi refused to install a catflap, and now that I've seen old virgin-growth doors with pet doors inexpertly applied to them, I completely agree with his decision.) Also, removing it allowed quite a bit of light into the kitchen, the same light that now comes in through the little window over the sink.
We still have cats, but future owners may not. And frankly, the open doorway at the top of the stairs allowed for heat to sink down and litter box smells to rise up. A drafty exterior door, sits on a landing halfway down to the basement, allowing in light, but also chill breezes. So, HomoDommi and I resolutely searched the many used architectural warehouses until we found a suitable door. (Hence, the opportunity to see the sad fate of old doors -- some with plastic pet doors destroying the bottom third, some painted and cracked, and even a few from neighborhoods which had come down in the world, fine-grained old oak, now with 7 locks bored through them, reinforced with steel, and clearly opened that final time by a police battering ram leading a narcotics team.)
We chose a five panel door (so it matches the door to the bathroom), with a window on the top, for light to shine through. It had been thickly painted, many coats, but you can estimate the quality of the original door by looking at the detail work on the panes -- we chose one with a raised inner panel and curved molding in the panes, indicating that someone originally thought this door was worth artisanal touches. At some point, the door had been kicked in, and the toe panel was a collection of giant splinters, but all the parts were there, so we thought we could glue it all back together.
(In the basement, ready to be stripped. HomoDommi did all the stripping using a gentle, non-toxic product that works just as well as the more aggressive ones, but slower. By the way, the toe panel glued together as good as new. Stronger than new, in fact.)
(Here is a close-up showing the grade of wood under all that paint, the detail work on the panes, and the hardware all cleaned up. In this shot, we'd done two rounds of polyurethane -- we did five coats in the end, including the oval under the hardware, too.)
In a shocking before and after comparison, here are photos from almost the same position, taken in February and last week. On the "after", The Texan is painting the sill from white to a neutral warm brown. I forgot to mention that we also had to build the wall out about 8 inches (behind the door) to accommodate the new cabinetry.
Eager to show some progress, we have already hung the finished door. Maybe not the best idea, to place a large glass window in the narrow hallway through which we'll be carrying about 20 heavy cabinets and appliances, but we'll live with the risk.
The other door we have worked with is the entrance to the dining room. In 1915, this was a swing door, positioned about a foot from the corner of the room. In the 1950's (or earlier), it was moved three feet further out (to allow for a little table in the kitchen) and converted to a pocket door. We hadn't intended to mess with this corner at all, but when we removed the sheetrock from that wall, this is what we discovered:
That is, although the photo doesn't show it well: the header over the pocket door has sagged hugely in the middle in the 50+ years since installation. Again, this is a load-bearing wall, and some not-future-thinking contractor in the past chose a 2x6 with a huge knot in the exact middle (visible on the left of the photo) to guard the upper stories against gravity. The knot has split down the middle. (This header is actually two 2x6s, but even the one behind has sagged, although less than the knotty one.)
We really aren't sure that the header needs to be fixed -- maybe it has sagged as much as it ever will, and the house is as settled as it can get. But it worried us, so HomoDommi suggested a way to shore it up: deepen the four-foot long wall by one more 2-inch beam, "yammered" (as he says) into the header and supported itself by more studs. In essence, move the pocket door one 2x4 width in front of itself. We can mask the new depth of the short wall, because on the other side of the door we have the new laundry chute, which now simply won't stick out as far from its surroundings.
As long as we were at it, The Texan and I convinced a reluctant HomoDommi to buy a new pocket door frame. Our door falls off its tracks one use out of two, unless you are very careful.
"But it's easy to get back on the tracks," HomoDommi pointed out.
"But why should you have to?" we replied. Technology has improved since our doorway was built --more wheels, more guards to prevent the door from swinging, smoother gliding. You can buy pre-assembled frames at the local Build-More Stores for under $60.
(During. Things didn't align -- nothing at all in this whole project has aligned -- and "we" -- that is, HomoDommi -- had to plane 1/8" off all the studs above the old header to allow the new header room. The Texan is vacuuming up the sawdust and shards as he does the scary work. I don't like planers -- too loud and too sharp.)
(After. See the new ladder-frame on the left of the door -- the door itself slides oh-so-smoothly between them. The lighter wood is all new framing, deepening the wall and supporting it. On the right is the shiny new laundry chute with flooring filling the hole in front of it.)
This unplanned corner of kitchen remodel took a little more than two days of full-time labor, not including the hours spent staring at it and trying to decide what could be done and whether it should be done. By the way, despite the assurances of easy installation on the box of the pocket-door frame, the instructions -- two sets of them -- were worse than useless, badly written, with diagrams labelled by part-number, not function, and contradicting each other. And, as has become de rigueur for this project, we had to take apart the frame, cut it to size and put it back together again to fit our old, pre-standardization, house.
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