Upstairs door finished, and energuide progress

Here's some pics of the door I just refinished. It turned out pretty good, there's still some paint residue, that I'd like to get rid of eventually. The painters tape ripped the paint right off the wall as well. I knew painting first was the wrong order, we were just so sick of the wallpaper glue walls.



















The hardware turned out really nice. This the second door finished in the hall, I think the other one was finished almost 2 years ago. Only 2 more to go, the bathroom and the bedroom. We can't really leave those ones off, so they'll be more difficult to finish.













I've been working on sealing up the attic hatches as well. The doors were done, they needed frames though. So I built 3 frames and installed those, using my new brad nailer. I measured the frames for the one with the thicker walls, it has a layer of 3/4" wood, then 3/8" drywall, and the door was mounted behind. So the other hatches, the frame is sticking out. I'm going to have to get creative with the trim. At least it's just in the kid play room. I would have bought 4" wood for those frames, and then ripped them down. I guess I should have measured them all. Now we just have to spray foam around the gaps, and add weather stripping to all the attic hatches.

I took the 1/4" plywood of the last wall in the workshop as well. I took the insulation out as well, even though it didn't look that old. I prefer the roxul insulation, since it's partially and air barrier, it's fire resistant, and has a higher R value. It looks like they had some rot on this wall, it's all been replaced, it looks like maybe 10 years ago. There is a mystery pipe coming out of the wall too. I think there may have been an oil tank in this room at one point. There was an underground tank in the backyard as well, that's been removed. I thought I could smell a little bit of residual fuel oil. And when I moved the shelf away from the wall, I noticed some condensation. It doesn't look like there was a major leak. I've already fixed the draintile on 2 sides, looks like the front is next. I think it has draintile, I don't think they damproofed the wall though. So we'll have to dig it out, parge it with mortar, and cover it with tar. We have to dig in the front anyways, so it's not that much extra digging. We still have the galvanized supply pipe, that needs to be replaced. I have to call the city, and see what's involved in that. I can't even see where it turns off, since it's been buried at some point. So I guess we've had a busy weekend here, still a long ways to go. I need to book an energuide appointment, I'll book 2 or 3 weeks from now, so we can get it all done.

Hallway Stripping coming along

Well it's a hard place to strip since it's so narrow, we finished stripping/sanding one of the doorways last night. We start with the heat gun and get all the paint off. There's this goo underneath, it's like filler, but it's everywhere. I do a coat of chemical stripper, to get the thick parts of that off. Then you need to scrub it hard with denatured alchohol. I use the 3m stripping pads instead of steel wool. You soak it in alcohol, then scrub like crazy. I think I spent 2 hours scrubbing the one doorway. When it's 99% cleaned off, I switch to sandpaper. I use a coarse 100 grit, then 180 grit. Anyways, we got the first coat of waterlox on, and it looks mostly good. Might have to steal Gary's trick of painting the parts that still show paint. I've been finding that 4 coats of waterlox does a good job. So 3 more coats, and then strip the hardware, and we're ready to put the door to the upstairs back up. There's still a long way to go, that'll be 2 doors out of the 7 doors in the hallway. Only the bedroom and the bathroom are still there, so we're half done. We're planning on getting new ones for the dining room, and the living room. Probably french doors, with a prairie pattern, to match the windows (the original ones) and the front door.

We're also trying to find good replacement windows. I'd like to avoid vinyl windows. We may use them in the kids rooms upstairs, we'd rather not though. I've been looking at Marvin windows, they're one of the only ones that has vertical grain fir as an option, and they're the only ones that have the fir, and inserts as an option. Loewen has fir windows, put they dont' do the insert type. The Marvin french doors are really nice too, they have the european style locking frames, so they're really secure, since we'd be using them as exterior doors, to the new deck we're planning. I'm sure they're really pricey too, so I'm sure we'll be saving our pennies for a long time. For the interior, we're thinking the simpson doors look nice. We've looked for salvage doors, and haven't really found anything good, so we'll probably end up with new. It seems like salvage french doors, in the pattern we're looking for are hard to find.