Salvaged Front Door Project Part 5 - Installing The New Jamb And Door

The front door project is pretty much wrapped up now, and I just need to post the last few entries about it. I could post everything in one post, but there are nearly 40 photos, so I'm splitting it up in 2 parts (Part 5 and Part 6). Another third entry (Part 7) will show the installation of traditional bronze weatherstripping (only partially completed as of this writing).

As you know, the salvaged antique door has been stripped, repaired, lightly stained, and varnished, and I've built a new jamb for the door. Before installing the door, however, let's take a last look at the door that's been on the house since I bought it back in 2010.

Originally I had thought of keeping the existing (new) door jamb and simply changing the door for an antique one, but in the end, that was a stupid idea. In the meantime, I had trimmed-out the door (several years ago) but I didn't cut and install the top crown since I wasn't sure if this door would stay, and I have very limited supplies of the door crown mouldings. I'm glad I waited.



The interior of the old door is still fairly nice (keeping in mind that I still hate modern steel doors).





View from the living room (green) and from the office (grey).





The exterior of the door, however, has always looked like shit. The mouldings are not properly installed, there's a gap at the top, and I've never liked the look of the ribbed metal threshold.



There are also extra screw holes around the lock area that I never bothered to try and patch.

NOTE: The gap at the top just shows black tar paper, but it's solid wood behind this. There's no "hole" or draftiness from here, it just looks bad.





Demo started with removing all the mouldings. The plinth blocks will be reused, but the vertical boards will be too short now (I can maybe reuse them upstairs on a normal height interior door).



You can see that this newer door was installed against one original side of the door frame, and that the original door had only two 3" hinges.



The door was removed, and the jamb was unscrewed. The jamb slid out of the opening with a bit of persuasion.







You can see that the original height of the door was taller (filled with 2x4 scraps).



All the wood scrap fillers, the remains of the old door jamb, and the spray foam was scraped off. Here you can see the base of the door all cleaned up. You can see the edge of the foundation, a 2x4 bottom stud, and the edges of the barn board (diagonal) subfloor. The grey boards with a bit of a peach edge are part of the porch. And yes I'm still looking forward to getting rid of all that hideous grey tile!





This view is a bit cool to see. This shows the construction of the house. Interior drywall, cardboard/paper, tongue and groove (inside), 2x4 framing, more tongue and groove (outside), black tar paper sheeting, and finally the original cedar wood siding - which isn't visible in this photo but you can see it in the one above (followed by later additions on the rest of the house exterior).



Something that is a bit hard to make out in the other photo is that the bottom 2x4 over the foundation had been hand-cut to form a slope (like a wooden window sill) and I assume that the original door jamb's base had a slope in it. Mine didn't (if I had known I could easily have made it with a slope!) so I had to patch this area to make it square again. I did this with an "L" shaped section of wood in 2 pieces. A 1/2" thick length nailed at the front, then a new board over the whole thing.



I also had a bit too much side-to-side play in the opening, so I filled part of it by nailing some pieces of 1/2" plywood around the opening.



Once the opening was ready, the jamb was installed mainly only on the hinge side. This is important because I had to hang the door FIRST, and then adjust the jamb to clear the door around the 3 other sides. I don't even know if the door is perfectly rectangular, so I couldn't just install everything "level and square" in case it wouldn't work out. It was also much easier to just tweak everything else on the 3 other sides of the door with the door hanging in place.



I found evidence of an old door bell location that is almost at the same place as the new one! The new doorbell will be just about 2" higher than the original was.



Lots of fiddling around had to be done to get the door to sit as nicely as possible. In the end, it's NOT perfect, but it is pretty close, and it looks great, opens and closes properly (OMG! I'm not used to that!) and I'm very happy with it!









What a huge difference already! Next: mouldings!

Salvaged Front Door (Photos)

Here are some photos of that gorgeous antique door (that weighs a freakin' TON - actually probably close to 80-100 lbs) that I salvaged from the trash several weeks ago.

There's a section at the top that needs to be reglued and clamped, and the entire thing needs refinishing, but otherwise it's as close to mint condition as I could ever hope to find. No newer lock was ever installed on this door, which is pretty amazing (I almost hate to drill into it, but I'm going to have to do it), and there are very few small nail holes for curtains, etc. No deep gouges, or other damage (with the exception of one spot on the moulding), and it still has the original lock, handle, and plates (as well as half the hinges). I'm hoping that I can find another set of identical hinges.

Part of the reason that the door is so heavy is that it's 1 3/4" thick, and it's made of solid BC fir (which is a very heavy and dense hardwood). BC fir was used to make factory floors, as well as large supporting beams, and the masts of sailing ships (tall ships). It was also frequently used (around the 1880s to 1950s) for millwork in homes. Today it's almost only ever found as fir plywood, and to buy solid lumber is ridiculously expensive. The wood to build this door (new) would cost over 1000$.

You will note that the mouldings on both sides of the door are different. The extra deep ones are on the exterior (around 1" thick) and the plain ones are on the inside. There is also a decorative frame around the upper glass on the exterior side.

You will note the one small damaged corner on the horizontal moulding just under the glass (to the left). This will be easy to patch.



Nice deep mouldings.



I kind of like the deep crackled varnish, but I'll be completely refinishing the door to give it an even colour, and better weather protection.



Interior side:





The door had been set down onto the lock side, and I assume that the lock must have been jammed in place to cause this much damage to the catch. You can see the extreme bend, and the blue line represents the correct line that the steel should follow. I took it to the vice and anvil, and straightened it out.



Once the catch was repaired, the rest of the lock was cleaned, the rust was removed, and most of the pieces repainted in flat black.



I will be cutting a custom key to fit this lock (which is a pretty simple thing to do if you can find a suitable blank).



Side notes: This door came off a foursquare just a block away (at the end of the block across from mine), and I will be installing it as my new front door. This means that I won't be using that "prairie" door (the blue one).

My Settee Project (Part 4) Finishing The Settee

Note: Originally posted this past Sunday (March 23rd).

The settee has been finished and brought home for a week now (Monday the 17th) and I've been procrastinating about writing-up this last part.

I was excited when my fabric came in. It came in around 3 in the afternoon, and I waited until work was done (4:30) to open it, unroll it, and look at it. I was really lucky to find that although I had ordered only 5 yards, they had sent approximately 7 because it was the end of the roll. As it turns out, I end up needing those two extra yards!



The pattern was a bit brighter and more "lime green" than I had thought, but otherwise, it was pretty much what I was expecting.

Continuing with my seat stuffing, I fixed the cotton (removed some from the front) and finished my rough cover.



Next, I prepared and sewed my cover. Originally I wasn't going to have a piping running across the front edge, but Pierre suggested that I put one to "square-up" the look of the seat.

Because there's a piping there, I wanted to match-up my fabric band. Basically, because there's a sewing there (the seat cover is 3 pieces consisting of the main seat, the piping, and front band) you lose an inch of the pattern if you use the same piece because of the 1/2 inch seam allowances. In order to match the pattern, you need to cut both pieces (main seat and front band) from two separate places on your fabric. Does that explanation make sense? Basically you need to waste quite a bit of fabric to avoid having the pattern mismatched at the piping seam.

To make things even worse, I cut my front band WRONG the first time (the pattern ended up in the wrong spot), which wasted most of 2 yards of fabric that could have been used as my side arms or possibly the back panel. I was very upset with myself, but we carefully planned out the other pieces, and it turned out okay.



Once the seat fabric was finally put together properly (photo above) and tacked in place, I started working on the back. It's at this point that I realized that all the added height of the finished seat made it VERY difficult to add the webbing, burlap, and other "foundation" work on the frame. It should have been in place after the springs were covered, and the edge roll was reattached, but before any stuffing was done on the seat.

It was difficult to do, but I managed to get the back webbing and burlap installed.

Next was redoing the "lumbar roll". This was a padded roll of straw wrapped in burlap. I have never seen one like this, and neither had Pierre. It serves as extra support at the base of the back. I simply transferred the straw into a new burlap sleeve, and sewed it shut on 3 sides.



It was then tacked on the bottom rails, and hand-stitched to the back burlap/webbing (as before).



Here's a detail. Also note the added piece of webbing on the arm. Originally the fabric was just pulled around the burlap and stuffing of the side arms, but having a webbing here (folded in half) helps add a lot of strength in this area. Other sofas often have a wooden rail here for this purpose.



Re-installing the horsehair and moss padding.



After the moss/horsehair was a layer of new cotton, followed by the rough muslin cover.



Finished fabric:



Work on the arms was next. Burlap was added (tacked only on 3 sides - none where the webbing strap above is), followed by the original horsehair padding. This was the only photo I got of this step.



I reused some of the original cotton for the arms. I had wanted to do the same for the back panel, but it was unevenly worn, and I didn't use it there. The reason: the old cotton is more compacted, and has fewer gritty imperfections than the new stuff. It's also a bit thinner, and I wanted to keep the arms relatively "slim".



Patterns were cut from the existing old covers (beige stripe ones) and used on the rough covers as "test fitting" since they don't need to be 100% perfect. This is prior to nipping and tacking them in place.



Rough arm covers installed:



Some adjustments were made to the patterns, and applied to the finished arm panels. These are also made of 3 pieces (top "wing", piping, and lower arm). These were matched and mirrored for height, but not matched with the back panel (which I could have done if I were super picky, and if I had a lot more fabric to work with). Additionally, the top wings were loosely matched with the arm as best as possible (the arm end where it meets the wing has a large curve, so getting a match is difficult). The left arm has a near perfect match because of the large leaf pattern that flows well into the bottom piece, but the right one was harder to match.

Side note: the seat's front band had been only temporarily tacked, since the arms wrap around under it.



Finished inside arms, along with the finished front band. This shows the piping being installed around the perimeter.



Side panel installed. Note: these are always tricky to install. There is a combination of 4 different fixing methods used on this single side panel:
- Cardboard "blind tacking" strip along the top horizontal section of the arm.
- Ply-Grip (a flexible metal edging) used along the curve of the wing top.
- Metal tacking strip along the front edge (basically a metal bar with nails in it, where the fabric is wrapped-over and tacked down).
- And a simple row of staples tacked down the backside of the sofa, as well as on the bottom edge.



Next, the back panel.



I wanted to stick with historic materials, so I used stretched burlap panels as a stiffener here.



The shallow curve was carefully tacked using cardboard strips (along the top), and metal tacking strips on both sides.



The last step was the bottom fabric. I used our "better" bottom fabric, which we use on our antiques, and hand tacked it in place.



ALL DONE!







Finished sofa as seen in my living room (note that the colours from the shop above are closer to the actual colours, and they look darker/dimmer in my house photos below).