Dogs and Jen: Home Edition

Last weekend I caught an episode of This Old House. It was about as tedious as I remember, but there was a great segment featuring some guys who refinish old doors and hardware. They said that they stripped paint off old hardware by cooking it in a crock pot with some detergent.

I had to try this. I mixed a tablespoon of laundry detergent into a roasting pan of water, and put it on medium-low heat on the stove. Then I dumped in the key and knob hardware from my basement door and hey! They were right! I was able to peel off the paint pretty much in one piece, and a few swipes with my brass wire brush got the rest. I’ve finished the four doors on the first floor, and have one in the basement and seven upstairs left to do.

As part of this, I also want to get all the skeleton locks working. That has involved moving strike plates and sometimes chiseling out holes for the locks. The doors will also need some sanding and repainting, but that is another project for another day.

Before

After

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 10th, 2008 at 12:45 am and is filed under house, projects, renovation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.