I've been buying, sanding, and gluing these vintage storm doors for the last 4 years. It was such a relief to finally get them installed.
Let's start with the barn loft door.
This vintage wood cross buck storm door was given to me. It came with the screen and the glass insert but it was in sad sad condition. I completely disassembled the door and sanded each piece completely bare before I reassembled.
I then epoxied all the screw holes, hinge mortises, and door handle hole. This door was a right hand door and I needed it to be a lefty. The bottom of the door was in horrendous condition but we really lucked out because we needed to cut off 1/4 inch to make the door fit. This got rid of about 95% of the badness. We used epoxy filler to fill in the little voids that were remaining. Thank goodness someone invented epoxy filler.
We think the door looks perfect for a barn.
The second vintage storm door was installed on the back of the house. I purchased this door for 10 bucks at a Habitat for Humanity Restore in Battle Creek, MI. This door had the glass insert and was held together with 20 coats of paint. I could not believe how many layers of paint that were on this door. The first coat was red and they did not prime the door, either. It was repainted red many many times before they decided it needed to be light blue. The light blue phase was short before they returned to the red. When I purchased the door it was painted navy blue and the navy paint was so thick it looked like it was applied with a putty knife..
The door has all the paint removed and has been sanded and sanded and sanded but it still is red. I am hoping that the primer blocks out the red because all the storm doors will be painted white.
The third storm door (kitchen back door) was $30.00 and came with a glass insert. This door was in very bad condition and the glass insert was in even worse condition. I was able to remove all the paint and get this door down to raw wood. I still need to do some sanding in the panel area at the bottom.
This door required some dis-assembly, gluing, some wood patching with wood, and of course epoxy filler in all the screw holes. The glass insert will need to be replaced with a new custom made insert using the original glass but for now it's doing it's job to keep out the autumn wind.
The hardware for the kitchen and back door were purchased on eBay. These work well with the original thumb latch door handles on our exterior doors.
I kinda like the red door. It gives a bit of punch to the corner!
ReplyDeleteAs I have been stripping paint off this house I have been able to see it's evolution of colors.
ReplyDeleteIt started out grey with a lighter grey trim then the trim went white.
The house has been grey, tan, grey, white, and then finally that ugly pale yellow.
The doors on the other hand were white, teal, red, and finally forest green.
The wrought iron gates,the wrought iron handrail, and the lights on the pillars were still red when we bought the house.
I'm going to start out white and we'll see if I get the urge to add color.
If the body of the house was white, I'd paint those doors red in a heartbeat.
I'll probably not want to paint ANYTHING after stripping all that paint off of everything...LOL