Articles with doors & windows

Construction Day 4

The door has arrived. Or rather Sergey and our builder picked it up and delivered it home, since the warehouse wasn’t ready for delivery for several more days.

But before we can get to the good part, it must get a little uglier. And so we are all boarded up.

It took just about an hour to remove our door and window in the kitchen,

Along won’t our security bars. These things always made me feel safer – we are in the city after all- but the look would not be becoming on a beautiful French door.… Read the rest

Much Ado About the Frenchies

While we keep finalizing our kitchen plans – lots of back and forth still on the details of the layout, we have started the research on french doors. the first time you hear the figure of $3,500 its certainly a shock. but as that turns out, it is actually quite a reasonable figure for an 8 foot tall door, and estimates can get much much higher.

Research was tough at first, as most show rooms carry just a few manufacturer names, and i haven’t really come across any sales people that were keen to share their knowledge on french door essentials.… Read the rest

The Real Deal

After two years of thinking and planning for the new kitchen, it finally feels for reals. you know how? well it happens when you go from this:

to this:

and many many of these:

Pretty cool eh’

We have been working with our architect friends who were kind enough to help us way back when we were just preparing to prepare (i.e. putting together our kitchen registry for the wedding).

We have spent probably a total of 40 hours in the last month just on our own (and over several sessions) with IKEA kitchen book getting the cabinet layout just right.… Read the rest

Getting warmer

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).… Read the rest

Ready Strip

The good news is that the peel away did an excellent job:

so much so that layer of paint just came off with the wax paper. awesome, since it takes only 2 minutes. but, since i ran out of peel away i decided to give a try to another product that i got for free from craigslist (someone was done renovating)

Ready Strip! The goo that came out of the bucket looks straight out of goosebumps novels

I decided to do just one plank in case it didn’t work that well.… Read the rest

French doors are a royal pain in the butt

Ok so the perfect patio door that would allow lots of light through was stripped, painted, and re-painted. and then it was time to weatherize.

an important step to block rain and wind from coming inside. so sergey got some clear silicone gel for me, loaded it up into one of those gun squirty things, and told me to go for it:

basically its fairly easy – press on then gun, squeeze out the silicone, smooth it out, wipe off excess with paper towels.… Read the rest

Transom – Finished (almost)!

And yet, much remains to be done. like the molding (thankfully we got some very similar molding at the brass knob warehouse). but for now, here’s what happened after peel away layer 1, 2, and 3 failed to take out the gazillion or so layers of paint covering the transom. I gave up on perfection and decided to sand the transom, rosettes and the top portion of molding.

I did use my sander, although I did resort to sanding sponges to do crevices.… Read the rest

Transom Adventures: take 2 & 3

After second application of peel away was removed, and the transom was scrapped for a few hours, it looked worse, if that’s possible. half the molding missing, probably did not make appearances better

 

so back to putty peel away

the crevices in all their (rather gross) glory, after the third round of peel away. discouraging isn’t it?

 

and the overall take — which i decided would have to do for sanding:

… Read the rest

Transom Adventures

With the plan to put in a new patio door, it made sense to tackle the transom and molding around it. One of the features that sold us on the house is the amount of original woodwork intact – moldings, rosettes, stairs, banister, wood paneling, transoms. All covered by layers, and I mean layers, of paint.

I don’t have a very good before shot of the transom, I was so anxious to get to it.… Read the rest