The Doors - study R (2)

This was the worst door. Broken. Eaten. But, work, polyurethane glue and some metal reinforcement can do a lot.

Basic construction is nice heavy planks, with thinner wood panels. Hole-and-pegs in the corners.

This door was varnished, stained, or whatever, with a dark brown stuff. Took that off where necessary for reconstruction, but left part of it in place because I do like the darker colour. You can use wood oil with a colour, but I don't have pigments for oil. So, all natural here. Some hidden edges still have some nasty green paint. Left that there for posterity.

Where there are a lot of holes from wood nibbling critters I have not spared the filler paste with fibre.

This one needed some reconstruction...

The Doors - the bathroom (1)

There are quite some nicely made old doors in this house. Real craftmanship, heavy wood. But, also: old, nibbled at. One even broken apart. Here's our bathroom door, one of the 5 doors that need(ed) work.

Apparently largely untreated, un-varnished, un-oiled, un-whatevered. Have I just sanded away the patina of two ages? Well, I won't try to sand away all old scratches and dents.

Who knows what these doors have witnessed. Life, death, sex, murder? They're more scratched at the lower half than above. Probably they were kicked or bumped into quite a few times during the ages.

Finished:

Work in progress:

Gutters, garage, cave room and terrace - finished!

In "gutters-or-no-gutters" we discussed that we opted for ground floor gutters. This is how it turned out:

This should prove one of the most important measures: there's a slab of concrete under these tiles, where there was sand and gravel before, allowing water to reach the back wall, which indeed was damp on the inside, too.

Any water splashing down ends up in these canals. The new andaluz tiles on the walls protect the walls. The staircase has turned out quite nice too. We think. Oh, the hand railings need to be put back still.

The terrace is now tiled:

Still some wet spots in the garage when it rains heavily:

That is caused by water running off against the wall, where a little bit still seeps into the wall and below. We'll put row of small tiles on the wall there, or use that terrace-rubber-paint.

The garage floor was painted with spcial paint for garage floors:

The cave has it's new Kerakoll breathing plaster. And you can see where the walls are still damp, a few weeks later:

This will slowly dry out in time. Moisture that until now was trapped under "plastico wallpaint".

This is now the front of the house:

Not strictly necessary for protection, but for appearance.