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.

Screen Porch

Over the weekend I worked on the screen porch. I had mentioned earlier that there was one small section that I didnt get screened in because I needed to finish framing it in. When this was a sunroom this section was just closed off, there wasnt a window here. You can see the section I'm talking about in this picture from last week. It's the small strip between the column and the wall.

Here is the basic framing.

Instead of hacking up the trim on the columns as was done previously I cut the framing to fit around the trim.

You can see the missing trim that was cut away previously, this will be replaced later.

I added beadboard to the top to match the rest of the porch then primered and painted it and installed the screen.

There are still lots of little trim pieces to add to it but I needed to hurry and get the final screen up.

With the porch completely screened in we cleared the room out and pulled up the masonite that was stapled down to the original floor. It took about an hour to pull out all the 1" long staples from the floor.

With that done we brought our wicker furniture in.

The next day I began work on the brackets for the screen doors. We still have one original screen door on the house, it is on the upstairs front porch door. The screen door is built the exact same way but it has some very nice brackets on them.

I removed one of the brackets to use as a pattern.

Sixteen brackets later and I primered and painted them.

Then installed them.

Man, what a difference it makes. Soon I'll build a screen door for the front door, then all the screen doors on the house will match.

Columns complete

Yesterday afternoon I finished painting the columns. I still have some trim to install on them but that needs to wait until the railing and balusters get installed.

I also attached the aluminum screen to the doors, installed them, and installed the screen all the way around the screen porch (except for one small area that needs some more framing). Hopefully today I can scrape, primer, paint and install the trim that covers the edges of the screen.

Front Porch Work

Well I've finally gotten back to work on the house. It feels really good to be accomplishing things on the house again. It's been almost 6 months now... I took the entire week off last week so I could get the front porch done.

I was so excited about getting back to work again that I forgot to take pictures the first few days.

I started by clearing out the screen porch area, it had become a holding space for new antiques in need of restoration. Then I began installing the 2x4 framing that the screen will attach to. While I was doing this I had some help that was scraping old paint and primering on the rest of the porch.

There was an area of the framing on the screen porch that was missing. It was made this way but I still cant figure out why. Anyways I built the sill just like the rest of it. Here is a pic of it (sorry, no before pic).

I will fill the seams in with bondo and sand it smooth.

I found a nice set of wood screen doors at Home Depot for $20 each! I had to widen the doorway by 6" and cut down the doors by about 4" for them to fit. I used a dowel jig to reattach the top part of the door.

In the above picture they are just sitting in place. I took out the fiberglass screen and will be using aluminum screen in it's place.

Next I got back to stripping the columns. The last time I worked on the columns was last year, you can see those posts here, and here.

The double column at the right side of the stairs had a lot of rot at the bottom. Unfortunately there was no saving the bottom section. The wood used in the columns is 1" and 1 1/4" thick so I bought 2x6's and 2x8's and ripped them down to the correct thickness. Here is the rebuilt bottom section, as I mentioned before I didnt get pictures for the first few days so I dont have a before picture of the column base.

Then I installed the top part of the column and primered it. The capital of the column was also rotted. The way it's built it has a large block of wood in the center and the decorative trim is attached to it. The large block of wood is what was rotted. I used an old sill beam to get the correct size piece of wood I needed, 3 1/2"x6 3/4"x18". I ripped it to size then attached the trim to it.

Then I installed the column.

The capital is built wrong so I'm going to need to take it back down and rebuild it.


Another capital had a lot of rot so I had to rebuild it as well. This one is not near as complex as the double one.

As you can see from the picture above there are only two original pieces on this one. I ripped the block of wood to size then cut out the decorative trim by tracing an original piece from another capital on to a 1x6, then cutting it out with a jig saw. I used wood hardener on the original piece that had some rot.


Next I finished rebuilding the soffets and facia on the porch roof. Here is a before picture of one of the areas.

And here is after installing the soffet and facia.

The spray foam is a small area of rot that I couldnt cut out. I filled it with the spray foam then I'm going to cut it down and cover it with bondo then sand it smooth. I still need to install the facia trim in two areas that you can see missing in the pic.

In the before picture above you can see that the ceiling was missing from the front part of the porch. That was the next thing that I installed.

With all the columns finally installed I began painting them.

I finished four columns before it got dark on me. I will finish painting the rest of the columns this afternoon then finish painting the screen porch area so I can install the screen.