Gorgeous human creatives!
Here is a presentation about the repairing and glorifying of my doors: the job took a couple of days, and is connected with a general improving-of-boundaries on multiple levels - including improving all my doors and windows - which I'm immersed in right now.
The doors in question here, which were my most needed repairs, are from the shared corridor (with 2 other properties having doors off of), and were the most rattling and drafty of all the doors in my magical medieval abode. These -now golden and solid! - doors go into my studio rooms, which are my also sleeping and relaxing space.
It might not look like much work, but there were many hours involved, and much emotional effort! I assessed every aspect of their workings, and methodically adjusted and tweaked each part - so now there is no rattling or draft, and the sounds from the corridor (my neighbour slams doors and mutters loudly to herself a lot, which echoes around the corridor and used to echo into my private space!)
The adjustments of all the door parts involved a variety of drill-bits: some for wood, some for metal, and some even for marmo or marble, like these holes in the floor which needed to be widened at one side or the other.
It was EXTREMELY satisfying to solve the problems, one by one, and to have the tools at hand to do this with!
I love to live in Gift, use what I have, and be autonomous in being able to solve problems in my sacred home in particular - the right collection of tools and materials is vital - even if I did have to run up and down myriad stairs to get another one, every half hour, throughout!
I genuinely love my nails and screws collection: just this morning, I salvaged another few wonky nails from the fireplace, as I've been burning old building wood recently, and hammered them straight again, then used them for hanging up the fire-side tools: I love that old things like this can be loved again and are precious items in our world.
These photos are from the beginning of my re-fitting the centre strip in the double-doors: I had to remove an old, loose strip, which was rattling and which kept catching and breaking more, when I pass through the doorway - I have to keep only one half of the door open, as my privacy is important, and I move between the two sides of the house regularly through the day and evening.
I do everything by eye, and by feeling: no measuring at all: these are some strips of wood from an old mirror frame, which had broken years ago - I broke the frame open, and then figured out how I could use it and some other scraps, to fit down the centre of the two doors.
The old mirror frame also gave me the idea to paint the whole door gold - plus the fact that I possess a large tub of gold paint (illustrated below)! This was a wonderful boon, as I'd thought for many years about painting these doors and having some kind of protective symbol on them, as I've had severe issues with aggression from my neighbour in past times - but this was the perfect solution: gold is so powerful physically, symbolically, metaphysically, etc - it was a beautiful process, realising I could paint it all gold; this spurred me on to finish the practical aspects first!
This is the difficult part of making random scraps work!
It is always nerve-racking to put the first piece on, not knowing if the rest of the pieces are going to appear as needed!
At this point, I actually took the doors off entirely, and changed job, to start putting on these rubber strips that I had bought especially: they are not self-adhesive, so the hammering-in of them was quite fiddly; I had to take the doors off so I could hammer the nails into the rubber strips in the corners, in particular.
These old hinges are wonderful; they're easy to lift up-and-off - which make it easy to adjust a door - many things these days are made purposefully hard or even IMPOSSIBLE to repair, so that you will consume more. I ADORE having an older property, which is not like that, and which I can adjust to my heart's delight!
#proofofcreation
As I often mention in my posts, I do not work linearly: this is where I began painting the door before it was finished. This was sensible, as it needed quite a few layers to really have the nice solid, gold effect that I wanted.
And once the doors had an essence of gold on them, it was more satisfying to be working on them!
Here the other side of the doors is off, so I could paint the edges and to add more strips of rubber, which I'd had to go and hunt down in the new town.
I cut the strips where they meet the top of the centre parts of the door - otherwise they'd stretch and let in the draft again:
And worked more on the holes in the upper door frame and the floor, so all four doors would work better - the other doors are directly opposite these ones, a meter away, on the other side of the corridor, and arrive in my kitchen and the rest of the Arthouse.
My work stool, salvaged and painted white years ago, when the medieval quarter was so abandoned that you could walk into any old house and claim some discarded furniture! The stool was necessary to reach the upper door parts.
Now it's beginning to look more finished!
The paint helped the messiness of it to look more uniform!
A sneaky peek into my studio-and-bedroom.... I have a thin muslin-type of curtain, which stops anyone peeking in, when I open and shut my doors - not that it ever happens that someone is passing when I open my door, but it is symbolic for me.
And the finisheing of the multiple layers of gold... The centre strips are not perfectly aligned with the centre of the door, and I will add a further series of strips of wood to the back-centre of the doors: I have to do a complicated jig-saw cutting of a piece of long wood down the middle, to stretch my scraps into enough... Looking forward to that final touch!
In the meantime, my life is much improved by this fixing up of my doors: boundaries set on myriad levels! I no longer get so disturbed by the noisy comings-and-goings of my neighbour - and the opening and closing of the doors no longer rickety and rattling: there's a lovely solid clunk of the door closing!
Job well done, me!
LOVE to you all in your DIY and building efforts!
