Replacing an old garage door with a wall

Our garage door to wall transformation is nearly complete. Complete enough to show you some progress shots anyway.

We initially planned to hire this job out, but after asking my dad what kind of contractor I should call, he sort of just took the job on himself. Yes, he's great. No, I'm not sharing him.

He started by ripping out the old door, door frame and the flimsy insulation, leaving a giant hole in the house. That hanging plastic was there just to block the wind some and keep the debris outside.

The end of day one was looking a lot like this.

We decided to do a wood frame wall rather than a stone or masonry wall for one main reason: weight. The weight of cinder blocks or poured concrete would have demanded busting up the floor plus part of the driveway and pouring deep concrete footings to support it all. More work, more money, more trouble. Nope, a stud frame wall will do just fine.

But one thing we could not do without was adding a window. It's what I wanted most out of this project: natural light in a dark and dingy basement. I'm hoping to turn this space into a work area, so it was a necessity. The long and skinny 2 x 6 foot window was special order from Lowe's for $160; I was surprised it didn't cost more.

I wasn't completely sold on the idea of having a small patch of siding on the house, but there are not a lot of options for weatherproof exterior materials. Plus introducing a fourth material to the existing stone/brick/siding combo would probably have looked just as weird. So we used the same approximate color and style as the top and the back of our house.

The clay color also blends into the stone foundation color so from far away, it doesn't really draw attention to itself.

After some calling around to various to-the-trade siding distributors, I finally located the same(ish) siding in stock at Home Depot. Imagine that. (FYI, not all Home Depots carry the same siding color or profile in-stock, so if you can't find what you're looking for at one location, try another or check stock online. There's a good chance it's different.)

We still have to add some trim around the edges of the opening and then paint the wood the same tone as the siding, but with everything already weatherproof enough for winter, those jobs will probably have to wait until next spring.

And the inside?

The inside is still not complete, but that's OK. It tells you how bad it was that I can look at this unfinished wall and think it looks great.

If this photo is looking a bit wonky to you: the window is level, and the floor is not. The floor is actually far far from level. But that's an issue for another day (or never).

The view is nothing amazing, but look at that light! It's not a dungeon anymore! The natural light still catches me off guard when I go down the steps.

I mentally budgeted between $1000 and $2000 for this project, so I'm excited it only added up to about $420 with DIY labor. More money to spend on something else!

See the before pics >>

Next up: Closing up a garage door

Introducing our next renovation project: closing in this ugly and useless garage door.

If it were functional, this door would open up directly into our basement. That is, if you were to you walk down the basement steps, boom: you see where the car would be parked. Even if we wanted to use this space to park a car, I don't think it would be safe or up to modern code (i.e. exhaust could get into the living areas too easily).

We actually had a pair of these metal doors when we moved in, but we replaced the left one (that opens into the actual garage) with a modern thermal door and opener. But back to the door on the right...

It's old and thin aluminum. Somewhere along the line, someone tried to seal up the door on the inside to shut out the cold, but did a crap job of it all.

A couple of sheets of insulation board and a can of spray foam insulation isn't enough to keep anything warm. Not only is it not airtight, it is so thin, you can easily talk with someone outside through the door.

So after four and a half years of living with this makeshift scenario, we're finally going to replace the door with a real wall. A radical idea, I know! More details to come as we figure this whole thing out.

Ugh. Sometimes I feel like all we do around here is fix the weird and poor choices made by previous owners of our house. Anyone else in the same boat?

Update: Project complete! See the new wall here >>

Stripping and repainting our front door frame

The frame around our front door needed re-painting. The old paint was peeling and there were a handful of useless nails hammered into it and painted over. I guess they were probably used by a previous owner to hang Christmas lights. The whole thing was ugly.

How to faux paint a brass patina

The kick plate on my front door was shiny brass, even though the rest of the hardware had developed a nice patina over the years. I'm not sure if this style of door is even supposed to have a kick plate, but because of the visible damage on the door itself, I had to put it back. But I wasn't going to put it back shiny. No, ma'am.

I suspected it was just laquered, and thus protected from weathering. But after stripping it and a failed attempt to speed the oxidization process with vinegar, I realized it was probably plated brass, which apparently doesn't oxidize.

At this point, my only option to make the plate match was faux painting it to look like patinaed brass. Brass is made of copper and zinc, so the patina takes on a greenish cast like that of copper. There might be products out there (glazes, etc.) that do the same thing, but I already had the paint and thought I would give that a try first.

I experimented with a bunch of different blacks, browns, golds and greens on the backside of the kick plate and finally found a winning combination that matched the rest of the hardware close enough.

The recipe I came up with started with a base coat of a deep brown. (The paint I had on hand has yellowish undertones.)

After that was dry, I mixed up a very, very watery medium green wash. (The same green I used for this chair and this table... similar to the color of copper patina.) And spread that thinly.

A few super thin coats of the watery green and a lot of blending, and I got a good approximation of a natural brass patina. After all was done, I sprayed it with an exterior clear coat.

I didn't do anything to the existing brass screws, but the new finish matches them almost perfectly. 

Refinishing my 81-year-old front door

Our front door was in bad shape after years of neglect. The finish was completely flaking off, revealing the bare wood underneath.

See what I mean? Bad, bad. It was liable to give you bloody knuckles if you tried to knock.

After some initial indecision about whether to stain or paint, I started scoping out doors in our neighborhood and neighboring neighborhoods and noticed that my door with its natural wood finish seems to be in the minority, so I thought that was worth preserving.

Our front door is probably our exterior's biggest asset, and I didn't want to be the one to "spoil" it with paint. (Not right now anyway. We'll see how the new finish holds up.)

The first step was sanding off the old finish, using a coarse 60 grit sandpaper and an electric sander. After about five minutes, this is what it looked like. See the two right panels? The exposed finish was just flaking off like nothing.

The whole sanding process produced so much more dust than I expected, so it's good I had a dust mask. I probably should have also been wearing goggles, but they kept falling off. And with the dust mask, and some ear plugs and the goggles, I was feeling a bit too claustrophobic.

At this point, I figured it was time to remove the hardware. I took off the shiny brass kick plate. I expected to find some spider nests or water damage. And I did find a little bit of each.

But I was also astonished to find the previous finish had been protected under the kick plate. Crazy!

How long this door was neglected is anyone's guess, but the difference between the finish and what it had become was a lot more drastic than I could have imagined.

The finish was perfectly protected behind Mr. Eagle Doorknocker as well.

Once everything was sanded (first with 60 grit, then with 220), it was time to address the rotting trim around the window. The stuff on the bottom of the circle was flaky and falling off.

But the top of the circle wasn't really damaged at all. (Yeah, that's what the bottom was supposed to look like.)

I carefully pried all of the trim off using a screwdriver and a pliers to pull out the nails.

The top was pretty secure; I had to drill some random holes so I could get my screwdriver under the trim.

I was scared to death I would break the stained glass window, but I took it slow and everything came off without a problem.

Here's the door completely sanded and with trim removed from around the window. I couldn't really sand off any more of the graying wood right above where the kick plate was. 

Cleaner than it's been in years. Still a little splotchy, but hey, this is an 81-year-old door I am dealing with. It's not going to be perfect. 

Almost ready for stain, but first a little wood filler on some deep cracks and gouges.

Then I used a wood conditioner. This is supposed to prepare the wood to accept the stain better. I'm not sure if it made a difference, but I figured the old wood needed all the help it could get.

I chose a gel stain in a medium brown called Cherrywood. I was afraid it was going to end up looking too reddish, but it turned out to be very similar to the swatch on the label.

One coat of stain, and this is where my big oversight of the project was revealed. The wood filler I used was only sandable/paintable, not stainable. I used stuff I already had on hand, so I didn't bother reading the label. And it came back to bite me. After the first coat of stain was dry, I re-sanded all those areas taking off all the wood filler.

The second coat of stain covered all of my sanded areas without trouble and made the color of the whole door a little richer.

After two coats of stain, it was time to seal the door with three coats of polyurethane. Our front door faces south and gets full sun all day, so I was glad to see this mention that it protects against sunlight.

Ideally, I should have taken the door off the hinges to work on it, but I can't really do that by myself, and waiting for someone to help me take it off was fueling my procrastination. And we sort of needed to be able to shut and lock the door at night! 

This process was drawn-out, between the multiple coats of stain and sealer and all the drying time (8-10 hours for each coat of stain and 4 hours for each coat of polyurethane). There's no way we could have functioned without a front door for several days.

After the door itself was finished, it was time to replace the trim around the window. I ordered this flexible molding online. It's not real wood; it's made of some sort of rubbery resin that won't crack or rot. 

Honestly, this was the step I was dreading the most in the whole process. I knew I had to use construction adhesive to adhere it to the door, but I wasn't sure how I was going to hold the molding up while the glue was drying. It wasn't really a clamp situation. It took me the longest time to figure it out, which is why the rest of the door was completely finished before I even started on the molding.

My solution was to put a single nail at the top of the circle (the installation instructions advised against using too many nails). This allowed me to work my way around the circle, gluing the trim in small sections.

I used painter's tape to hold the molding in place until the glue set up. This method ended up working a lot better than I expected.

A couple of coats of stain and poly and it was looking a lot like real wood.

After attaching the hardware, the lengthy refinishing process was officially complete. This has been hanging over my head for a very long time; I'm so glad it's done!

And because I'm crazy about a side-by-side before and after...