A Long Time Coming . . .

Easter came and went without too much fanfare.  Cold rain, power outages, all the teenage cousins being herded through an inter-dimensional portal to China by a five year old, and coffee with a parole officer.  Really, it was a pretty tame affair.

Anyhow, I finally got around to taking a picture of the new front door.  While a full twenty some percent of you think that I will be burning in hell, it really doesn't look as bad as I imagined it.  The fact that it opens and closes with ease is a bit seductive too.

And, for the astute few of you out there who are wondering what in the hell is hanging from the doorknob, that would be our real estate agent's lock box.

That is right.  If you want an old Victorian possessed and brimming with a full century of evil, this house is for you.  Also, we're already done all the hard work.  Finish the paint job, refinish a few floors, and mow the lawn and that is it.  Enjoy old evil with all the modern amenities. 

For those you who are wonder how or why we could put the Devil Queen up for sale, that is another story which I'll tell soon.  However, until that time, here is a little bit for you to think about: $4.00 a gallon gasoline.

Will I Burn in Hell?

Ladies and gentlemen, I need some hand holding. What do you think about a door like this for the Devil Queen? Since her original, 118 year old door was done in by some morally degenerate thief, I need a replacement. And, I need it soon because what is left of the original door is falling apart. So, waiting for months or years for the perfect, period piece is not an option.

Will I burn in hell for replacing our kicked-in front door with something like this? This door is new, solid wood from National Home Center.
	Yes, there is a special place for people like you.
	Yes.
	Maybe.
	No, but it still sucks.
	No.
Free polls from Pollhost.com

Change At The Pace of Continental Drift

You can be forgiven for thinking this a picture of my wife's Persian cat. The whole point of this picture is what you are not seeing: daylight shining in under the front door.


Our front door has been an unrelenting source of misery and discomfort.

By the time we bought the Devil Queen, the door didn't have much going for it besides being original to the house. The roof over the door had collapsed, the floor had rotted through, the joists and sill plate were disintegrating, and the door was slightly warped. As a nice finishing touch, all the original hardware had been stripped with the exception of the hinges. I think the 10 coats of paint over them may have saved them.

Over the last four years, the framing has been redone twice. The first time it was done by idiots (not us), and the second time by a first-rate contractor who finally fixed it. Even with the wonderful job the second crew did, the door has never been quite the same.

The weather stripping I installed, a vinyl "tube" mounted on a metal bracket screwed into the jamb and flush with the door's face, was a disaster. The weather stripping pealed the latex paint off the edges of the door and it had to be mount so close to the door's face to seal that it interfered with the getting the door locked or unlocked. And, it still didn't seal well.

Then, there is the threshold. It was too close to the door for any of the bottom mounted sweeps or weather seals. However, the gap was big enough for daylight to shine in under the door in the early morning and there was always a draft. I tried stuffing all sorts of things under or behind the door, but they didn't help much and they were usually a pain to deal with as you opened and closed the door.

Apparently, I am not the only one with this kind of problem. While forlornly dragging myself up and down the isle at Lowe's I discovered a sweep which mounts on the interior face of the door. Ideally, the sweep is supposed to be flush with the top of the threshold, but ours is a bit too far forward for this. Still, it seals for the most part, you can't see daylight under the door, and the draft is nearly gone (definitely 90% better). I haven't done a true, empirical study, but, based on some readings I took with a thermometer, the main hallway is now 4 degrees warmer on average. Even close to the floor, the temperature is only a few degrees cooler than the thermostats setting. It may not sound like much, but this is a huge improvement.

In addition to mounting the sweep, I've replaced the vinyl-shit weather stripping with spring-bronze on one side and the top. Even though I'm not finished yet (one side to go), this has made a huge difference. The door seals much tighter and it locks and unlocks without a problem.

Sure, it sounds great, but there is still one nagging question. Why didn't I do this earlier?

A Knob, a Hole, and a Door but No Answers

Here is one of the many unfinished Devil Queen projects.



This is our closet door in the master bedroom, and, aside from the coat of white paint, it is pretty much exactly as we found it. Note the hole where a tragically 1980’s doorknob resided. While I can’t say that I miss the cheap knob any, the hole does pose a problem.



I figure our possible solutions are as follows:

1) I go online and find a modern reproduction knob that will nicely fill the hole.
2) I try to ignore the hole and mount a rim lock over it.
3) I patch the hole, paint the patch, and install a rim lock over it.
4) I patch the hole and install a different sort of lock & knob like a mortis lock, etc.

I’d considered installing this lock, but the door is 1 ¼ thick and the knob can only fit a ¾ thick door. Actually, I have to wonder to what kind of door this would go. I haven’t seen too many ¾ doors. Maybe it goes to a cabinet?

Making Fugly Fly, Part I

The last few weeks, we (my wife, her friend Laura, Jack, me, but mostly my mother-in-law and her friend Liz) have been working feverishly to overhaul our fugly exterior paint job. We didn't get anywhere close to fixing the whole Devil Queen, but we fought and won several important battles.

First, every window, door, and piece of trim on the back porch plus the one master bathroom window visible from the back porch have been scraped, primed, and painted with a pale yellow. It looks nearly white next to the sunglow yellow of the house (Valspar incase you're wondering), but it's actually yellow.

I love the ceiling fans. It's amazing how much cooler the porch is with them. We're trying to decide if we want to get light-kits for the fans or not.

And, as you can see, we actually got one of the storm/screen windows back up. This is great because we can open the windows without cats, bugs, and God knows what else coming into the house. Since summer is nearly here, this is very important.

Purging the Back Log

Here are a couple of photos from two weeks ago. Life got in the way, and I forgot to post them. Not too gripping. First, the door jamb I "tweeked" with a hammer and chisel for about an hour. The weird part was the door fit with room to spare before we painted everything. After we painted it? Not even close to fitting, and the paint alone can not account for the difference. It's like the whole world swelled.

And here we have some quarter round I mitered with one of those $14 plastic miter sets you can get a Lowe's or Walmart. Not bad for $14.

Rim Job

I'm probably getting way ahead of myself, but I'm obsessing about door hardware. Sure, the Queen isn't painted, I really need to be doing some serious prep work, finishing bathrooms, and what not, but what I really like to do is strip and shellac my doors and fit them with rim locks.

I never really thought about it until I read this post over at the Emery Restoration, but some of you, particularly bungalow dwellers and all that came after, might not be familiar with these buggers.

From the little reading I've done, rim locks were very popular (if not the only real option) at the end of the 1700's through roughly 1900. Prior to 1830, most if not all rim locks were imported from Great Britain since there were no manufactures in the states at that time.

The Devil Queen was built in 1890, and, judging from ghostly voids like the one shown below, all of the Devil Queen's doors were equipped with rim locks.

So, where did the locks go? During those long years that she sat vacant waiting for some dumbass like me, someone stripped her of all her hardware. Lucky me. The prices for replacements, whether antique or reproduction are sky high, particularly when you are looking to buy eight to ten of these things (go here and here to look at some of the beauties out there). That could easily add up to $400-$500 at the minimum. You can't even get a good deal on most of the ones on eBay either.

These two reproduction locks are fairly modest and probably what the Devil Queen had. The first set is about $60 and the second around $90.

So, I'm just a poor bastard left selling his ass on a street corner to finance his addiction to old house hardware, right? Mercifully, no.

For once, I am a bit of a lucky bastard. When we torn down the old farm house in Atkins, we stripped all of the doors and hardware. Also, when we bought the Devil Queen, my mother-in-law bequeathed her antique doorknob & hardware collection to us. And, the good folks at Nightmare on Elm Street sent us some more. So, at no cost to ourselves, we have quite a collection from which to chose.

Now, the real question is, will all or any of these locks fit our doors?

And the answer to that will be another post.