From Trash to Treasure - part 2

Day 2 of the doors is here! Join me on my ongoing journey to redo a set of discarded cabinet doors into a piece of wall art. 

Doors with hardware removed

Troubleshooting
After having a cup of coffee, I worked on removing the hardware from the door. Of course my dad was nearby watching me be armed with a screwdriver. The outer hinges were easy to remove, as were the knobs themselves. The slight difficulty came from the fact that the screws themselves were stuck in the door. I have no problem with the fact that they were countersunk into the wood but I had to use the handle of the screwdriver to push the screws back out of the holes. Speaking of the knobs, I found myself pondering reusing them as well (with alterations, of course) instead of purchasing new knobs that aren't exactly what I have in mind. 

While I was getting the hardware off, I was explaining to my dad about how I've figured how to make the doors into a wall hanging. As I was falling asleep last night, there was a part of my brain trying to figure that out and I realized that though I wanted to have it wired much like you would a picture frame, a single wire across the entire thing would not work. It would be too much weight being placed on a single wire and nail. So instead, I am thinking of treating each door as a frame so both would be wired for 2 different nails. That way, the weight is distributed evenly. After explaining the idea to

Above - Some of the damage that needed to
be sanded out
Below - The original knobs to the doors

him, dad thought it over and agreed that it seemed like a logical course of action. 

Examining the doors now that the knobs and outer hinges were removed, I quickly discovered that I would indeed have to sand the entire thing. I was noticing small dents and scratches around the entire outer frame of the doors. I also made the decision that instead of just focusing on the raised middle panels which would only give me a 4 inch x 30 inch space to work with, that I would use the space up to the outer frame to give myself more room. So with that, I get to be one with sand paper and a lot of patience to get the wood prepared before I do masking. 


Just keep Sanding

Left - Door that hadn't been sanded yet
Right - Door that was at the halfway
point on sanding

Using a rough 100 grit sandpaper, I started the process of sanding the doors to  at least smooth some of the damage out while also getting the protective layer off of the wood. Sitting at my front door, I just worked on sanding. Occasionally I had to wipe the door down with a clean rag to clear off the dust layer so that I could see where I needed to do a little more work. For the 2 hours or so my life was sand, wipe down, examine, repeat. Some sections were a bit more stubborn then others when it came to removing the clear lacquer that was on the the doors. After a bit of work and getting coated in a  layer of fine baby powder consistency dust, I finally was able to get the doors the way I needed them.  Of course I asked dad and my boyfriend for a second opinion on if I needed to do a bit more sanding but both agreed that I had the wood at the perfect feel if I was going to repaint. They also gave me a suggestion on how to remove the rest of the fine layer of dust that was now on the wood as a result from the sanding process. The next step would be to do masking and map out what I'm going to be doing. 

To be continued...