Last time Seth asked what that big gap on my swinging door was. It looked like it would fit a piece of jamb trim, but why would this be? This is a swinging door, not a regular hinged door. I decided to clean the old dark shellac off because of two reasons. One is that I knew the 1st floor was finished in white oak. The wood was much lighter originally. Secondly was that thia door had been in the attic so long that not only was the shellac dark but it had accumulated so much dirt and dust that just would not come off with a simple wash. You could also not see any of the beautiful oak. So I took denatured alcohol and cleaned, cleaned, cleaned.
Now with it all cleaned i discovered a few things. Firstly I noticed that this door had at some point been made to fit a mortise lock. This was then closed up very early on because the repair to the door to hide this was excellent on the edge. It could only been seen where the push plate hid the know amd keyhole. And after cleaning the frame I found...
I found where hinges and the strike plate for a door had been. Confusing as the swinging hinges for the door have a Japanned finish and the repair to the door to fill the mortise was such high quality. I believe that the door and frame were either originally made to accept a declaration hinges and mortise lock and that it was changed very early on or that the original carpenter made a mistake thinking this would be a regular door and then had to fix his repair. We will never know the truth, but I love the history this door tells us and I prefer a swinging door myself. So I decided to add new push plates since the old ones could not be saved (believe me I tried) and I also added nice oak window stop trim to fill in the large gap between the swinging hinges and the door. It actually fit perfectly so I believe the original door also had a stop type trim like this and was removed when this doorway was changed.
Thanks Seth for making me investigate a little bit further.
Hello Matt, In old houses almost nothing is first draft. In my house in Cleveland Heights, Ohio there was a lot of nice woodwork, but on close inspection all of it seemed to have been refitted. Likewise, there was so much going on with all the doors that I wondered if they had been second-hand when the house was new.
ReplyDeleteEven in my no-so-old apartment in Taiwan, everything has been redone several times. The bathroom fixtures have obviously been replaced and refitted, and the doors had such large gaps underneath (remember that there are no carpets in Taiwan), and incidentally were painted slightly different colors, that once again I wondered whether they were obtained second hand.
Incidentally, what was wrong with the old push-plates? They seem one of the more indestructible items of hardware.
--Jim
I sometimes jokingly call my house a Frankenstein house because I am guilty of touching pretty much everything it in. Perhaps future generations will think "what the heck happened here". It's understandable here that things were drastically modified and moved around when the house was duplexed in the teens. Some of the work so good it was difficult to tell and some work done reused the original materials so it makes one second guess.
DeleteThe old push plates were zinc ( I think) covered in a thin brass coating. On top of that was not only stain and shellac but also a black tar like paint. I wonder if someone tried to darken the plates at one point to match a darker door? Anyways I tried EVERYTHING to get them clean and reveal the brass. They were simple plates but I wanted to try to keep them. I tried soaking them in a crackpot, I tried denatured alcohol, mineral spirits and even paint thinner and stripper. Nothing would get that old gunk off. As a last resort I tried using a wire brush and then an attachment on my drill. While this was successful in removing the gunk, it also removed any brass revealing a dull and somewhat discolored zinc...not very attractive. So I figured since I couldn't get the old brass plates alive again I would buy new ones. Obviously the ones I put on are fancy, but they are also solid brass of the same size, which I guess harkens back to what was "originally " on them.
I wonder if the local lumberyard offered a "prehung" option and they had to modify it onsite. In my old 1910 house, there was a number of things that had clearly been modified before the original finish was applied.
ReplyDeleteThats an interesting thought. I never considered that. Since the family that built the house owned a lumber yard, I assumed everything could be easily and quickly made to architect specs. Perhaps since these were built as investment properties perhaps they did them cost efficiently and so to just use stock prehung doors would make sense. That could then offer the question why go to the trouble of then changing it to a swinging door for a rental property? Functionally yes it makes for sense to swing for serving purposes,but the time cost for someone to change it from a prehung to a swinger would make me wonder why not just leave it as a simple door for a rented property? We will never know but the more I think about it....your idea makes sense. Thanks for that Sean!
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