This year's springtime project was to replace the interior doors. We had the standard thirty year old over-painted hollow core doors decorated with holes, flaking paint and chipped out veneer. We tore out the doors and jambs and piled them in front of our house. The city would have taken them away for us but the dumpster-divers beat them to it. The old doors were carted away in the darkness by the industrious scrounges. The new doors are solid-core, oak veneer, slab doors. They were pre-hung on oak jambs. We got them from Southern Lumber. The quality of the doors was a little less than I expected from Southern but they will do. (The lock mortises all needed extra chiseling) The big challenge for this project was trying to find enough oak bevel casing to go around all the doors. (roughly 160 feet of oak was needed) After going to two lumberyards (one of which looked at me like I was asking for a loaf of bread when I asked if they had any oak bevel casing) , two home depots and then discovering that two other lumberyards had gone under since the last time I was there, I finally found all the moulding I needed at Pinecone Lumber of Sunnyvale CA. Ro took charge of varnishing the moulding while I took care of varnishing the door slabs, and the tear-out/installation.  Ro picked out the door-knobs which are top of the line. No surprise there. They are from Emtek. Leaded crystal knobs with shiny brass escutcheon plates. These things are very well built! Now, the only thing left to do is to putty over all the nail holes.

Saturday May 23, 2009 02:35:12 PM -0500