Fixing up the Pocket Door

A little side project in the midst of all the big stuff happening around the house - I spent a couple hours this weekend fixing up the pocket door.

remember the pocket door we found in the kitchen? 

If you remember - when they demo'd the kitchen walls, we finally got to see the pocket door that we knew was stuck in the wall. We could only ever see the edge of it, so we had no idea that it was in great shape with an awesome window. We had them move it upstairs to be the new closet door - but knew it needed a little work. The edge had been painted many many times, with lots of colors sloppily painted further on the sides of the door.

door upstairs - with a lot of paint on the edge

So- first thing, I grabbed my heat gun and spent an hour or so removing the paint. Once I'd gotten everything off that way- it was definitely better, but still pretty smudgey.

after the heat gun - still schmootsy.

So then I grabbed some really course sandpaper, and hand scraped it down. Yes- I could've used the power sander which would've been faster, but it was naptime, and I was trying to be quiet. 

after sanding- no more paint, but some discoloration. 

 Then I removed the handle and locking mechanism, so that I could get the remaining paint off of it and the door around it.

lock comes off

After I cleaned it all up, it was clear that the heat gun and sanding had also removed some of the stain, leaving the edge of the door a little lighter than the rest of the door. So I dug around the garage and found a lighter walnut stain, and gave the edge panel a light coat. It didn't sink in very well, but just enough to darken the door up a bit. It's not a perfect match, but I think looks better.

cleaned and stained

Lastly - I gave the whole door a quick coat in polyurethane to protect it. I briefly debated sanding the whole thing down and restaining, but decided to just let it be. The door is old and should look old, I decided. (plus, there was halloween candy to poke at).

stained, protected, and ready to go.

I spent a little time scraping paint off of the edge of the locking mechanism, and then a lot of time trying to put it back together. A spring had come loose, and it took quite a bit of googling to figure out where it should go. Finally, we figured it out - putting the lock back together so that it will actually work.  Now when the door is unlocked, the handle pops out to grab. Then I just slid it back in the door, screwed it in - and called it a day. 

tinkering with the locking mechanism

paint mostly scraped off 

back in the door

 

close up of lock on top and handle on bottom

now when you push the button- the handle pops out

The door looks great and is ready to be used again. Our contractor was initially pretty negative about the idea of reusing old doors - but I'm pretty excited that we saved this one. I have no idea how long it was trapped in the kitchen wall, but now it's ready to be seen and used and hopefully will last another hundred years.

a bit of old character in a sea of new construction