Wednesday, December 6, 2017

Main Bath - Door and Trim

So after I scraped and painted the walls and ceiling in the main bathroom, the trim started looking really bad. We clearly had more hazards to address.  

The Door:
The door had been painted many many times and was pealing and cracking in all the corners. As part of my on-going paint chip removal initiative, I wanted to fix it. So during our weekend naptime, I grabbed my heat gun and started to remove it. I was shocked to find the door underneath was stained and in pretty good shape. I spent an hour or so on three different days, and got it about as far as I could - most of the paint was gone, but it was still sort of gunky. So we took it off its hinges, took it out to the garage, and coated it with stripper. That removed the remaining scuz, but there were still a few spots left. I had one more night with the heat gun to get a couple more of the thick patches, one more round of stripper to clean it off again,  and then just stained it and coated it with poly and put it back up. Altogether - this was probably around 15 hours of unpleasant work, so I will think long and hard about painting a stained door again. (Sidenote: I don't recommend taking your bathroom door off for a week while you have lots of strangers in the house-- makes things really awkward). 

the offending door

closeup of some of the cracking and pealing paint

there's just so much pealing paint

after one day with the heat gun - hello stained door!

after another day or two with the heat gun - still gunky. 

after 1 round of stripper

and another round of heat gun

stripped, sanded, stained, and back in place!

Trim
While the door was off its hinges and waiting outside, I ended up grabbing a brush and giving the other door and trim a quick coat of paint. After spending so much time trying to remove paint, I felt bad adding yet another layer to the closet door - but it wasn't chipping or in bad enough shape to need to be stripped, and now it just looks brighter and cleaner, with no chipping paint!

closet door getting painted

trim gets freshened up

So now there is no more pealing paint in this small room, but there are a couple more little things I want to do to improve the functionality of this space and make it a little nicer looking. 

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