Fire Rated

When we bought the house and completed the walk-though with the inspector he told us that the door in the laundry room that goes out to the garage didn't meet current code.  The hollow door is not fire rated and should be replaced.  It also was very drafty.  We knew we wanted to do some work in the laundry room and also replace other doors in the house so we figured we would do it all at the same time.

After the new front door was installed last year, Andy thought he could replace the garage door himself.  The problem -- as with many things in this house -- the door is not a standard size and a custom made steel or fiberglass fire rated door was extremely expensive.  Andy took the trim down and did some investigative work from the garage to determine that we could enlarge the door opening a bit to make a standard sized door fit. The storage above the door would have to be relocated but that was a minor detail compared to the price difference between and standard and custom door.

After lots of research and discussion with the Township we finally made the decision to order a new steel fire rated (90 min) door and when it got delivered Andy was quick to get started with the demolition.

The header above the old door was non-load bearing, so Andy was able to remove it and raise it to a height that accepted the new door.

He used his handy Kreg Jig to create pocket holes/screws to attach the new header without having to remove the existing drywall.

With the new opening framed out the door went in easily.

Spray foam insulation was added around the door to make it air-tight and even though it still needed paint and trim the new door was a huge upgrade.

New Shore Doors

We kept the original doors from the first floor while we worked on getting the house livable but as the summer went on it was clear that the doors were in bad shape.  They were old and the water damage was causing some of the veneer to peel and crack.  We took measurements for all of the first floor doors and then we waited.  Lowe's finally ran a promotion for a free upgrade to a solid core (a savings of about $30 per door) so Andy and I stopped at Lowe's and placed an order for all new doors.  The old doors were flat slabs but we decided to go with 2-panel doors to match the hardwood doors on the second floor.

Old powder room door.

Old kitchen door.

New pre-hung doors that Andy and Kyle picked up a few weeks ago.

You know it's serious work when the Carhart bibs come out!

Shimming and leveling.

New kitchen door is already looking better.

New bedroom door that required an interesting cut at the top left corner to get the frame to fit.

Bathroom and kitchen doors.

New powder room door.

A few of the doors required some minor trimming in the bedroom for the carpet. Andy taped the edges and made the cuts.

With four new doors in place Andy still had the bi-fold doors to hang in the laundry area.

I sanded and painted the trim earlier in the weekend so that Andy could trim it to fit and rehang.

The bi-folds went in easily.

And we had a few extra knobs from our bookcase at home so they got put to good use.

While Andy worked inside I took all of the old trim outside, removed the hardware, sanded, primed and painted.  It took most of the weekend.

While Kodak barked at me to throw the ball that he wouldn't retrieve because the water was too cold.

About half of all the trim drying in the garage.

Andy had enough time to finish the edges of the white-washed ceiling with cove molding.

Doors Optional

The house had a mix of interior doors when we bought it.  Some 6-panel doors downstairs and these flat doors upstairs.

For about a year after we bought the house we debated buying all new interiors doors or just replacing all of the doors upstairs to 6-panel doors.  Although there are a ton of awesome door styles available we decided to stick with the 6-panel door.  Lowe's runs a promotion every few months where they offer a free upgrade to a solid core door (instead of the standard hollow doors) which is about a $30 savings per door.  We took all of the measurements, waited for the sale, and ordered 7 new doors.  We were told that the doors would be easy to hang by routing out the locations of the existing hinges and drilling a new hole for the door knob. 

RIGHT! This was NOT an easy job (which is probably why I don't have any pictures of the process)!.  It consisted of tons of measuring, routing, drilling, carry doors (remember the solid core = heavy door) up 2 flights of stairs and then back down to the basement, painting doors, and installing new hardware.  It was a worthwhile improvement but I know Andy had many moments when he wished we would have bought all new pre-hung doors and just installed all new doors, jams, and trim.  That would have been a lot of work too, just maybe not as tedious. 

 All new Baldwin brass knobs...

Ignore the old brass handle on the metal bi-fold door.  This is in the spare bedroom and someday those doors will be replaced.

 

Reclaiming the Wall

With the new doorbell installed we decided to remove the louvered door between the hall and the kitchen (since we have never closed it in the two years we've lived here) and expose another wall.

The hallway feels so much larger and more open with the door gone, but that meant that we had some repair work to do to the door frame before we painted.

There was a very rough transition between the years of paint and the raw wood where the trim for the door was attached and we also had to do some repair work on the sections of the frame that were routed out for the hinges.

Andy glued in these makeshift shims so that we could sand everything flat and re-paint.

The areas were covered and clamped to ensure that the positioning was correct.

With all of the paint removed and the holes filled and sanded it was starting to look much better.

It looks even better now that it is primed and ready for paint. 

You can't even see where the old hinges used to be.