Had I known how much of a hassle this project was going to be – I never would’ve done it.
But here we are.
It all started at the Habitat Restore Warehouse with an impulse purchase of a very very old solid fir five panel door. I must have subconsciously known how awful it was going to be to deal with because it sat in the garage for over a year. It seemed simple enough – remove the old paint and mount on the wall.
After two chemical peels with industrial strength paint stripper and days of scraping later – I realized this door was so old it had seen 4 coats of paint (some of which was sure to be lead containing) and a bottom layer of shellac (the first finish I presume). Most of the layers of paint came off albeit laboriously, however 100 year old shellac is the stuff of nightmares.
Lots of wasted sandpaper later, after removing everything from the door (on both sides) we finally mounted some crown molding on the top and stained the whole thing. This is where I messed up. I failed to adequately remove the excess stain and created an off-gassing catastrophe. After almost a week I decided to try and ignore it and we brought it inside, installed some sweet reading lights and mounted it on a cleat attached to the studs. But the smell remained.
Eventually I had enough and took it back out to the garage to brush on (and wipe off) several coats of paint thinner, which eventually removed the excess stain while still retaining 90% of the color. After another final week of indoor drying (damned persistent rain) it could finally be rehung and my sanity could be restored.