Dining Room / Kitchen Doorway

Another project I completed is the doorway between the dining room and the kitchen. This is what it looked like before:

The first thing I did was to make and install the threshold. The kitchen floor is about 2" higher than the dining room floor because of all the leveling I had to do in the kitchen.

I used a piece of 5 1/4" oak flooring for the threshold, I cut both ends of the board at angles because the threshold will lay at an angle.

Once it was cut I cut and installed a shim piece to go below the threshold:

Then I installed the threshold:

With that done I installed the door casing. I found some casing that is very similar to the original casing in the house.

The casing is about an inch smaller than the original, I didn't have any rosettes that matched so I cut some blocks out of the oak flooring.

Once I have new casing cut to match the originals I will re-frame this doorway.

Dining Room

I took Thanksgiving week off to finish up some projects around the house.

The Dining Room was what I really wanted to get done the most. It has been half done since I moved the wall to make more room in the kitchen almost three years ago.

Here is what it looked like at the beginning of last week.

First I moved everything but the furniture out of the room, then I moved the furniture to the center of the room.

Next I scrapped the peeling walls above the picture rail. Once it was all scraped I mudded above the picture rail completely around the room.

With that done I worked on the door casings for the exterior door and the door that leads to the hallway.

The casings on the door that lead to the hallway had separated and were loose. I removed them and reinstalled them properly.

Next I worked on the door casings for the exterior door. You may remember in previous posts that the original doorway was closed off in the past and I reverted it back to a doorway.

First I finished mudding the area.

Next I began working on the casing and rosettes. the only two rosettes I had left were both split in half. I used my doweling jig and glued them back together with dowels.

Once they were dry I installed them above the door along with the casing.

Next I installed the picture rail on the wall that I rebuilt.

With that done I was ready for paint. I went around the room and glued down any loose wallpaper.

I really hated to paint over the wallpaper but there were just too many places where the paper was in too bad a shape.

First I primered and painted the trim.

Then I primered and painted the walls. It turned out that there was something wrong with the paint I chose, it was way lighter than the paint sample at the store. I didn't have a choice though and had to use it. I painted on Thanksgiving morning so we had to hurry and get the furniture back together for Thanksgiving dinner so I didnt get any pictures until after the dinner.

I also had to do some last minute electrical to get an outlet in for the china cabinet light.

I still have a lot of wainscoting to caulk and paint, I need to have some casing replicated for the door to the kitchen, and the ceiling needs to be primered and painted.

Dining Room Door part 2

A year ago to the day I rebuilt the dining room door. You may remember that this door was rebuilt as a window at one point and then closed in altogether.

I rebuilt it as a door as it was originally and installed an old french door that I had on hand.

As you can see it was missing many panes of glass and was in terrible shape. I installed a door knob and replaced all the broken panes except two that were only cracked but that was it.Not long after installing the door it started separating on the hinge side at the dowels so we stopped using it. It sat that way for a year.


Since the weather has been so nice lately I figured this was a perfect time to fix the door.

I removed the door and pulled it apart, then glued and clamped the door back together. Once it was dry I filled all the holes with wood putty, then sanded the entire door down.

Then I primered and painted it and reinstalled the door.

As you can see I need to finish the inside door casing.

The door works great now. I will be getting a screen door for it very soon. I will add brackets to the screen door like I did on the screen porch a while back.

Dining Room Wall sheetrock complete

I finally completed the sheetrock and mudding on the Dining Room wall.

I'll be pretty busy at work this week but hopefully I can squeeze in some time to get the picture rail hung and then primer the wall. It will probably be this weekend before I can scrape, primer, and paint the entire room.

Dining Room Walls

Two and a half years ago I moved the wall between the Kitchen and the Dining Room three and a half feet to make more room in the kitchen. I put sheetrock up but never got around to mudding it.

Yesterday I finally decided to finish it. I had to put up a few small pieces first. Then I taped and mudded it.

Today I will sand and put up the second coat.

On another note, we have unfortunately decided to paint over the wallpaper. I really liked it but it has a lot of issues. I would just tear it off the wall, it's vinyl and comes off real easy, but there are two other layers underneath and they are paper. That's a nightmare I dont want to get into right now.

Dining Room Door

In our dining room there are some shelves in what used to be a window, that was originally a door. I've been using it to store tools, nails, and other miscellaneous junk.

I thought about returning it to a window but to do that I would want to make it the same size as the rest of the windows in the house. This would require tearing out a large portion of the wall and a lot of re-framing.

So I decided to go back to a door instead. This would require a lot less work and it would return it to the way it was originally, I'm a big fan of returning things back to their original state whenever possible.

I started by removing all the tools and junk, then I removed the shelves and casing.

Next I removed the window framing.

Then I installed a sill, built the door casing, cut the door to the proper size, mortised the door and the jam for the hinges, and hung the door.

I still have a lot left to do, I need to install the inner door casing, plinth blocks, and rosettes, trim, install glass in the missing panes, install a door knob and lock, and caulk, primer and paint everything.

Kitchen electrical almost done

I was out at the house again on Saturday for more electrical work but I haven't had a chance to post since then. I'm almost done with the electrical in the kitchen. Most of what's left will have to wait until the cabinets are in for me to finish.


Above is a picture of the back door that leads into the kitchen. The room beyond is the one that will be demo'd soon and then replaced with a deck.

I know it looks like the light switches are on the wrong side but I'm going to be reversing the swing on this door. There is some heavy damage where the cheap door knob is now, it appears that someone kicked it in at one point. I will be filling this in and installing a door knob and lock on the right side of the door so it swings the other way. I wired up the two 3-way light switches on Saturday, the right one will control the recessed lighting and the left one will control the chandelier. The empty spot on the far left is for the porch light I will be installing outside the door once the other room is torn down.


The above picture shows the other two 3-way switches, this is at the entrance to the kitchen from the dining room.


These are the junction boxes in the attic, I still have more wiring to do here.


As you can see, I finally got a light installed in the attic space above the dining room and kitchen. I will be opening up a door into this space from one of the bedrooms and putting down a sub floor in at least half this area for storage.

Well, that's about it for now. I cant wait until this part is over so I can finally post some less boring pictures!

More electrical work

We didn't get to spend a lot of time out at the house today but I did get some things accomplished. I worked on installing the second circuit to the kitchen. The second circuit will run the fridge, dish washer, garbage disposal, and attic light. There will also be a third circuit run, it will control the chandelier, the recessed lighting, and the under counter lights.

I ran the circuits down from the attic space above the kitchen. Why I didn't think to do this for the first circuit I don't know. It would have saved me a lot of crawling around in the dirt under the house...

I'm running the wiring through the holes that the knob & tube wiring ran through.




The last picture above is the wiring for the attic light.

I found an old Bulldog friction tape box in the attic, it was used to tape up the knob & tube wiring.



We hope to get back out there some time this weekend to finish up the wiring.

Final kitchen demo

Once again I didn't have enough time to do the electrical today. I spent the day finishing up the demo and framing.

First thing I did was to pick up all the plaster and put them into contractor bags. Once that was done I started removing the boards on the wall next to the pantry.

I carefully removed the door frame so it can be reused then removed the rest of the boards.

Then I removed the shelves from the pantry. Unfortunately we're not going to be able to use the pantry since our fridge has to go in this location. It wasn't original to the house but it would have been nice to have.

I put the original studs back in place with 2x4 supports on either side, they are not load bearing so it's ok to do it like that.


Once the drywall is up I'll tear the pantry down and use some of the siding to cover the hole.

I started measuring the new wall so I would know where to install the outlets when I discovered that I was 2 1/2" short on the wall! I didn't notice it when I was laying out the kitchen in CAD because I chose a 27" wall oven cabinet by accident, we'll be getting a 30" oven cabinet.

I cut a small piece of 2x4 to 2 1/2" and screwed it to the floor next to the wall then moved the stud over on top of it. For the other side of the doorway I moved the stud in and cut the footer down 2 1/2".


With that done I went ahead and framed out the doorway between the kitchen and dining room.


Tomorrow we will be back out there to hopefully get the electrical done...

Dining room wall

Yesterday I worked on the dining room side of the wall. The first thing I did was install pieces of 2x4 in between studs for the wainscoting.


With that done I began working on the wainscoting. I picked out the 37 best pieces and removed all the nails from them. then I had to cut an inch off of each board. I had to do this because the floors, as it turns out, are not original, they were laid over the original floors so because of this I lost an inch of height over the wainscoting on the other walls.

With the wainscoting installed I installed the chair rail above it and the trim piece that goes just below the chair rail.



I know it looks like the wainscoting slants up towards the camera, it does this for a few reasons, one is that the floor slopes down towards the back wall, the other is that the support 2x4's I installed are level while the wainscoting follows the floor so it makes it look worse than it is. Once the drywall is up it shouldn't be noticeable at all.

This last picture is a few of the things I have found in the walls so far:

The bottom 2 items are toothbrushes that look very old, they appear to be made of bone or ivory. I just noticed some writing on one of them in the picture but I don't have them here, they are back at the Woodbury house. I will try to see what they say the next time I'm there.

The top item is a turned wooden spindle. These are the kind you normally see in a hallway or entryway as elaborate fretwork. We dont have any fretwork in the house, I have no clue how it got into an outside wall in the dining room.

Building the new kitchen wall

We were back at the Woodbury house yesterday. First I needed to tear down the 3 foot sections on either side of where the new wall will be. I had to be careful doing this so as not to disturb the plaster walls next to it.

I used a circular saw to make the cuts. I cut the chair rail and picture rail at 45 degrees since the corners will need to be mitered to meet the new wall. For the very top and bottom I used a sawzall being as careful as I could. I still knocked a little bit of plaster off one area though but it should be pretty easy to patch up.

Here's my chalk line for the first cut:


I cut along the line with the circular saw then removed the plaster and lathe from the wall:


Then I did the same for the other wall:


With that done we spent the next few hours cleaning up the plaster on the floor. We also got rid of a bunch of old appliances in the house by giving them away.

Then we got to work on building the wall:


The studs are a standard 16" on center configuration.




Today We'll be heading back out there and I'll install the header above the door, the door casing, then the wainscoting and the chair rail.