literary. when we took off the old molding and replaced the kitchen door we took the opportunity to add some insulation.

sort of wild that in certain spots you could see straight to the outside. the mortar just sort of crumbled out. sergey now thinks we should take down all of drywall in the kitchen and start everything from scratch to make sure we are good on all 6 sides (4 walls, floor and ceiling). that’s a conversation for another day though.

for now great stuff worked great.

Meanwhile, I  finally got around to sanding the molding for the door,

and some wood filler (doesn’t look that great really up close, but it actually came out quite well once sanded and painted)

 

light coat of primer finished the job before sergey took over.

I don’t have pictures of the process until the end, but it did take awhile. the molding planks weren’t long enough for the entire length of the door, so we thought of using two, and patching up the crack with wood filler.

sergey used miter saw to create angular edges to make the two planks fit together (thank you, Max, for knowledgeable carpenter advice).

 

then out came our friend’s molding nail gun (thanks ryan!) and molding went up. that thing is absolutely wild, it sounds like gun shots and is so massive!

at some point in the process, we realized that the bottom molding pieces had to probably come off for paint repeal treatment.

so, the door I was hoping to finish looks like this:

Still must use another layer of primer to cover up the wood filler that hopefully will make the molding look as if it came in one piece (even if i have to squint from the half way point in the kitchen to make it look so); and of course paint molding with real paint and attach the bottom molding piece.

So, still quite a bit left to do, but, we are getting warmer. and that’s good news.