Interior Bathroom Door...Finally

We have mentioned installing wall-mounted sliding "barn-style" doors, using the excess wood from the flooring install to finish off the space.  We really liked the look of the slab style doors we saw in other blogs, and Polly has a Pinterest Board for the door concepts we liked.

We wanted to finish (at least) the bathroom door by Christmas 2013, but a unexpected hospitalization for Christopher put this on hold until just before Valentines Day.

Keeping the wood flat and off the floor.  Yes, those are old crib rails.

The wood was planed by our good friends at Glendale Lumber nearly a year ago...yea, I know.  I generally like to have all the parts in place and in house before I begin a project...I managed to store the wood flat, and kept it from warping or bowing for all this time.

Sourcing the hardware was actually the most difficult part of the whole process.  We liked the look of the pulley "wheel" being hidden with the iron.

Problem was, these, at the time we started looking for the parts--two years ago--were pretty pricey.  Fortunately for us, the prices dropped 30% or more in the last six moths or so--we think it is due to the increased use of the barn doors on home improvement shows, such as DIY's Bath Crashers, Mega Dens, Man Caves, and Blog Cabin.

Back in July 2013, we found the website Rustica Hardware and settled on the Industrial Barn Door Hardware (Slyder Black Nylon) @ $268.00 each; Raw Steel finish for the rails;  with Barn Door Pulls (Industric, 8", No Flush Pull (only the front door pull), Raw Steel finish @ $40.00 each.  Total cost of the hardware for each door was $328.00.

Damage from improper packing.

Rustica’s customer service department was great—they replaced the damaged pieces and the rusted tracks for free—these items are heavy, and I guess the new guy was in the packing room that day, because there was just not enough padding to prevent the hardware from scratching each other. No worries, they made it right.

Door pull and pulley hardware--replaced free.

So the build on the door was pretty straight-forward. We wanted to keep the build simple, and to play off the wide-plank flooring.  We toyed around with several designs for the doors, using different backings, but finally came up with a "sandwich" of 3/4" furniture maple/birch plywood cut to size.  We then installed the ash wood "flooring" onto the plywood panel, gluing and nailing it into place.

The end piece was glued and clamped in place. Note the furniture-grade maple/birch plywood.  USA made, not from China. 

I think I'll use a bit more carpenters' glue for the next build.  Some of the ends of the ash wood planks "curled" slightly during drying.

Toe-nailing in the pieces--just like using a floor nailer, but with 16 gauge 1 1/4" nails. 

Yup.  It's square.

Clamps on both end pieces.

Since the tracks and door hardware were unfinished flat steel, we decided to use 1 3/4" angle iron to finish the sides.  Of course, this added some 30# to the already heavy 1 1/2" wood slab sandwich we created.  We had a local metal fabricator Arnold IronWorks in Maspeth.  He cut to length, drilled, and countersunk the screw holes we wanted.

Arnold Iron Works

We chose a #10 silicon bronze marine-grade screw from Jamestown Distributers out of RI.  They "match" the look we wanted for the doors (brass or stainless steel screws were to shiny) and they were obviously corrosion resistant.  They have a  Frearson vs. #2 Philips Flat Head--see the website for the image which explains the difference.

Screws.

We cleaned the angle iron with  turpentine, and sprayed them with Rust-oleum satin black.

We could not decide on a stain "color" for the plywood surface inside of the door; they were all too warm.  We decided to try this white-wash "pickling" stain.  It worked like a charm.  

We then sealed the surface with a water-based polycrylic thinned with Flood's Floetrol.

Close-up of the plywood finish.

The ash floor planks still had some of the finish on them, even after planing.  It took a pass with a 4" belt sander fitted with #80 grit, as well as several passes of a 6" orbital sander, with the final pass of #220 grit.  We then oiled the ash wood with linseed oil.

The finished ash.

The angle iron was clamped to the sides with tie-down straps until the screws were set in place.  

Close-up of the hardware mounted on the door.

Handle added.

The color of the plywood finish came out great!

One detail we did not mention was the floor-mounted guide, placed on the floor at the right-side door jam.  We had to enlarge the groove already cut into the flooring to a depth of about 1".  We planned the door so that this "natural" grove was on the bottom for this purpose.  Our neighbor, Pete, came by to help get the doors up out of the basement.  He also hung around and helped us with the router cut and the actually hanging of the door, which now weighs close to 150lbs.

Although it is tough to see, we had 2" square pieces of the extra flat track cut to mount against the drywall to provide a larger surface area with which to distribute the torque load of the lag bolts through the spacers.

Here I am installing the other tracks, adding in the 2" square flat iron along with the spacer.  Now all three tracks are installed; two await the fabrication of the doors.

APARTMENT FOR RENT

....Finally we are ready to rent,

front door

lots of light

just fit

window in bathroom

all new

bedroom

living room

view into the kitchen

Parquetry Floors

Polly goes to work on the parquetry floors.  We wanted to cut the old finish, but not really sand the floor.  She sanded and I finished.

The Bosch ROS65VC-6 6-Inch Pad Rear-Handle Random Orbit Sander with Vibration Control is awesome.  Really.  The variable speed makes a difference, and the tool is really easy to handle. The grey hose seen in the image can be directly connected to the sander, thus nearly eliminating the dust when used with the "holed" sanding discs.

Small trim piece (pine) used to transition the two floors.

Floor with a poly coat.  The wrong type of poly, however.  More on that next...

Still catching up

We (meaning me, Christopher) have not done the due diligence to keep up with posting--as we have been still continually at work on the house...The work depicted here is several weeks old...

The plumbers were in to finish the fit-out. 

The sink drain tail-piece we purchased (came with) our Delta faucet is PVC...Error on our part--but at the time when we bought the faucet, there was a change-over in Home Depot--to a low-flow faucet mix.  This meant that we had little choice of the faucets...

In the workshop--now moved to the basement.  You are looking at a transition (saddle) being fabricated to transition from the bathroom floor to the hallway.  I used a stock HD oak saddle and ripped it in half--slightly off-set.  Then stacked the pieces, glued, and tack-nailed the pieces together.

Here is the clean-up of the floor.  Note the pieces of Ditra and the stainless "T" Schluter Reno-T transition ready to go in.

Poof!  the finished product.  I used two pieces of Ditra, layered under the transition, secured with Liquid Nails, to fill in the gap.  A clear silicon was used to fill the gap between the wood and tile, then the Schluter Reno-T was fitted in. 

I left the plastic protective coating on the Schluter Reno-T as we needed to stain and finish the threshold.

We are happy with how it turned out.

Floors,stain, and finish

We are moving closer to completion, finally.  We did make a couple of mistakes which we are correcting, albeit painfully.  

We decided not to put vinyl tile down on the floor--over several layers of mixed-medium floor covering...so, here we are with a cut floor and with a dark walnut-esque Minwax^® Wood Finish™ Jacobean 2750 stain. 

After staining and finishing with poly, I cut the floor with 220 grit.  Not a great choice.  The unevenness of the floor created unevenness in the finish.  I had to re-stain....

After re-staining

Close-up of the original floor.  The wood is extremely hard.  Think about it, It was placed down in 1910.  It was harvested from 30, 40, 50 year old trees.  So the wood is really old...  Yes, we did not do a great job of cutting the floor--note the scrape lines in the wood at the top of the image--really hard wood, so the additional sanding(s) (using hand sanders) did not smooth out the rough cut by the floor edger sander...

Nice look we think.

With the full sunlight coming in from the skylight.

Sunbeam.

Rustic...a euphemism for not perfectly finished...