Opening Doors

When we first looked at the farmhouse, one of the things we really liked is that it still had a lot of the old fixtures and detailing, including the door hardware. The downside to this was that this door, going from the front porch into the parlor, was unopenable. We weren't sure if the door was just totally jammed shut, or if it was locked using the skeleton key (which we didn't have anyway).

Antique security system: the doors just don't open.

Then, this summer, we discovered that Chris's father had a whole bunch of skeleton keys that he'd picked up over the years. This made the strategy of randomly trying keys to see if they'd fit the lock seem a bit more reasonable -- or at least less like we'd have to start by purchasing a whole bunch of keys that probably wouldn't work. So, off I went, keys in hand.

I started out trying all the keys, but it seemed like there was potentially some issue with the lock mechanism itself -- a few keys felt like they were trying to push against something, but the lock wouldn't budge. So, I decided to go back to the option of brute force, just in case that worked. It wasn't an especially humid day, which was good, because it turned out that the answer to "why doesn't the door open?" was just that it was swollen (and a little bit painted) shut. A little finessing and scraping, and then some mighty shoving, got the door open.

Probably the first time in at least 15 years this door has been open.

Now the door was open... which put the pressure on to find a way to be able to lock it again before I went home. Fortunately, with the door open, I was able to take out the lock and discover why it wouldn't work: it was full of dirt and rust.

Ewww.

This was a problem for WD-40. I had that. In the end, the entire lock had to be taken apart, cleaned, lubed up, and put back together... at which point, it turned out that one of the keys in the Random Bag O' Keys actually did fit our lock!

With this success under my belt, I took apart and cleaned the lock on the door from the porch into the kitchen -- it was also disgusting inside, and the same skeleton key fitted that lock. In fact, the same key also opened our interior doors, like the door to the upstairs. There's still a bit of work to do on these -- the striker plates don't line up well with the door mechanisms (not sure why... are these door handles actually replacements?) and the doors still need some planing before they'll open well during the worst of summer heat and humidity, but we now officially have keys to the house!

In Which We Very Nearly Finish Something

Good news for anyone who wants to come help work on the farm: we now have a guest room, so we can hold you hostage and ensure you don't leave until the work is complete. You won't have a door on the bedroom, but you won't care because you'll have the whole upstairs to yourself. And you'll have to walk through the construction staging area that's the upstairs hallway in order to get to the bathroom at night, but that's just part of the experience.

Or you could just look at these pictures.

So, a long time ago, we had done the baseline work for the back bedroom: painting the walls and the floor.

Not featured: the floor paint

Well, now we've finally made real progress in this space. For one, you can see in the picture above that the baseboards in this room were incomplete. They were also unpainted 2x4s. All the rest of the upstairs has the wide baseboards you can just barely see behind the paint cans in the hallway. So during our Fourth of July week at the farm, we broke out some wide boards and finished the baseboards for that room.

Cutting mitered angles is the worst.

 We went with the process of "measure twice, overthink about whether or not you're cutting the right end of the board, measure a few more times, cut once, dry fit, measure again, trim down."

Oooh! Wide!

That little bumped out bit was a little tricky because (of course) it isn't smooth, which is probably why the previous folks never bothered finish the baseboards. Once we got the boards in place, it was time to paint and caulk the trim. I have to say that one thing I've definitely learned from our farm projects is that nothing makes a job look quite as complete as some well-placed caulk.

Houston, we have baseboards.

At this stage, we had a complication. The goal was to put a queen-sized bed in this room. We did the measuring, and it would be a bit tight, but doable. So we got a bed... and then realized that taking a queen-sized boxsprings up the steep staircase with a low header was so tight as to not be doable at all. My dad suggested taking first few stair treads off, but when we tried that, it quickly became apparent that we'd actually have to take off about half the staircase worth of treads.

Seriously, this van is the best.

So, we took out the window, put rope around the boxspring, and used the bucket van to take it in through the window. Ridiculous? Maybe. Effective? Absolutely. Since we had the window out, we went ahead and repaired the sashes, reglazed the glass, etc. Now we have something that's looking like an actual bedroom for actual people to stay in!

Never fear -- we have since added pillows.

You can't quite see it in this photo, but we still need to get the light fixture in place (but we have one) and then the aforementioned door needs to be painted and hung, but this room is awfully close to finished! It's actually more finished than the master in some ways... maybe we need to start sleeping up here while we paint downstairs.