Mind the gap - terrace door

 The upstairs terrace door needed some work. 

Not just that, when it rains we always have a puddle of water behind that door. 

Engineer Jansen has spotted why. Can you spot it too? 

Congratulations, you spotted the ansteystyle gap.

Here is a solution. An iron T-bar was added to the door threshold, so the gap is removed. The door now rests against the T-bar, no gap.

To keep water out of the house,  at the bottom of the door there now is an aluminium profile that makes water fall off on the outside of the T-bar. 

A little silicone for water proofing.

Hm, the alu profile is a bit off the door at the lower part. However, there is some silicone there.

If it rains very very hard water may still get in, there still is a small gap at the side:

If that happens the engineer will add a tiny extra aluminium profile.

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:

Ring the Door

The right front door scrapes the floor a bit. So, it needs a bit taken off on the underside, or simple be lifted about 1-2 mm.

Move the hinges? No. Since the new plaster we cannot lift the door off it's hinges any more without damaging the new plaster. The pins of the hinges are longer than the space available above the door.

Challenge: put a ring in between the two parts of the hinges without taking the door off.

Solution: cut a segment out of a proper ring, and hammer it in between.

Voilà!

Repair the door frame

Today used the chisel to install a piece of anodised aluminium profile into the door post that was vandalised.

And so it happened. Oiled the wood before, so that should be protected well. I see I need to cut off a bit of urethane glue still..

And the door will be oiled again too, now I just treated the wounds against rain..

The new lock I had managed to find, identical to the old one, is not. The cylinder going through the door is thicker and completely round, while the old lock has a .. eh.. keylock shaped hole. (...) Worse is, that if I would make the hole in the door fit the new lock, a small hole up would remain. Shifting the lock only makes matters worse.

Luckily the innards of the new lock are identical to the old lock's, so I simply replaced the (bent) lock internals and the (bent) lock plate. All done.

I do see that the door is made of nice thick planks of wood that were tightly joined together, but there now is a small gap between two where the door was treated so badly. I'll see how to fix that, later.

Door

This is the old door of the workshop/garage. (It's rotten.)

And this is the new one. (Not rotten.)

We did keep the old lock.

Because you don't want to get rid of such a nice old ironwork key.

Eh?