More Door Trim

This week we were determined to make some serious progress on the remaining door trim in the hall.

I hesitate to say we wanted to "finish" it, because I know what that usually means: we make a ton of progress but because there's no green check mark saying "all done!" I feel like we didn't do much.

So this week I set my sights on just progress.

We did a little work through the week, getting up the trim we cut and painted last week, which involved trimming some down to fit in the weird corner.

We've found that it's easier to make all the trim uniform and for the doorways too close to the wall, we trim off what we need. It's faster and one "special" cut instead of cutting everything smaller.

We also changed out the light switch in the hall with the new white switches we've used throughout the house and had to add a notch in the trim for it to fit. The switch isn't centered on the wall, but with the studs, we didn't have much room to move it.

Scott marked where the switch hit the trim and used his multitool to cut a notch out. It's not what they'd do in new construction, but in a remodel sometimes you have to work with what you've got.

Prior to the weekend Scott got all the trim up that we had already cut/assembled/sanded/painted, which was for the two guest rooms, the bathroom, and the laundry room.

That left the closet and the front and back of the entry to the hallway. A trip to Lowe's Friday evening left us prepared with all the wood we needed. We were even able to cut/route/sand/assemble all of it Friday night, meaning it just needed to be primed, sanded, and painted then we could put it up.

Unfortunately, Saturday morning we hit a snag when I went to open the garage door to paint. The garage door wasn't opening and the opener on the wall was blinking like crazy.

We did some googling, Scott took it apart, trying to diagnose the problem, and after a phone call to my dad we finally we decided it was done-zo. Caput. Dead. Not reviveable. So back to Lowe's we went. Did you know you can get a garage door opener that's wifi now for around $100? I certainly did not!

Dad came to help with putting the new garage door opener up and mom helped me caulk and paint the trim in the hall.

With a functioning garage door again. We continued work Sunday, picking up where we left off.

We painted the remaining trim, first with primer, filled any holes, sanded, and painted with trim paint.

In between coats Scott started constructing the closet door.

The hall closet is tiny, only 18.5 inches wide, and originally had bi-fold doors on it. Like all the bi-fold doors in the house, they went in the trash pretty early on. They had God only knows how many coats of paint on them that had dripped down the slats, making them look thick and gunky, and the hardware was rusty. Unfortunately, because of the small size, they would be custom doors, if we ordered them (and pricey!) so Scott decided to build one.

Instead of bi-fold, we wanted the same look as all the new doors, with two recessed panels. He took some measurements of the closet opening and the new doors to determine to sizes of all the boards and started cutting.

The doors have 1x4s cut down to size for the sides, then a top, middle, and bottom piece between the recessed panels. He got the spacing measurements from the new doors.

Here's what he was trying to replicate:

Also, there's a sneak peak of a finished door and trim 😉

He started by using the planer to cut one side of each board perfectly flat (to cut off the rounding that's on each "raw" board), then he used the table saw to cut down the 1x4s for the sides.

Next up came the 1x10 cut down to make the "top", "middle", and "bottom" pieces (of course they were all different sizes, because being the same would make it too easy!).

Scott dusted off his mortice and tenon skills he learned and used for building our cabinet doors and drawer fronts.

If you missed that post, here's what I'm talking about:

So that tenon (little tab thing) will slide into the mortice (groove) to hold the pieces together. The mortice will also hold the recessed panels. If you're wondering, why yes, I *am* still super proud of that Microsoft Publisher drawing of a mortice and tenon I made, ha!

He started with the mortice. He set the table saw blade to a half an inch high and ran the side pieces through twice, turning them in between to cut a perfect groove.

The other pieces (top, middle, and bottom) got both mortices (for the recessed panels to fit in) and tenons (to slide into the side pieces).

For the tenons, Scott used his Dado stack (multiple saw blades put on the saw at the same time to cut a wider cut), and adjusted the depth to be slightly more shallow so that when he flipped the board the middle part (tenon) would remain intact. He doesn't have a throat plate that fits the dado, so DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!

Once the mortices and tenons were cut we dry fit it together.

Not too shabby!

Scott used the circular saw and the rip cut tool to cut a piece of birch plywood down to the appropriate width and then just the circular saw to cut it to the right height.

We sanded all the individual pieces and dry fit them only to realize we forgot to add an inch to the height of one panel to account for the piece of the panel that slides into the mortice. Luckily, we had plenty of plywood, so we just cut another piece.

This time it all fit beautifully.

Once we knew it would fit, we took it apart and glued it together.

The glue needed to dry, so we turned our attention to the remaining trim.

We had that pesky odd angle on the wall with our guestroom door to cut trim for, so I coped a piece to fit in there nicely.

While Scott measured and cut all the remaining floor trim (small pieces in between the door trim were really all that were left), I caulked and filled holes.

In the middle of all of the cutting/caulking/etc, the new garage door opener timer came. It will automatically shut the garage after its been open for over 10 min, saving us from forgetting to close it repeatedly throughout the day. It includes a thermometer, as if we wanted that info 🥵🔥

The trim wasn't hard work, just tedious as it's very detailed work. We managed to get all the trim up, caulked it, filled the nail holes, and touched up some of the walls.

This hallway is really small and has a ton going on with all the doors, but it's officially one of my favorite parts of the house now. The trim around the doors draws your eyes up, making the standard 8' ceilings feel taller, and the cedar ceiling adds a touch of interest. The crisp white trim against the dark green/black accent wall looks so clean and stately. It's all finished off with the light fixture, original to the house with a new coat of matte gold paint.

We're resting our weary bones with leftovers for dinner on the couch while we watch Interstellar, marveling at our accomplishments from across the house.