Doors and music room

I've been stripping some reclaimed doors today.  We've had them for a couple of years and we're finally at the stage of being able to use them.  It was a very low-carbon reclamation process - we spotted when our neighbours were getting rid of them and carried them down the street to our house!  They've been sitting in the garage ever since, getting really dirty and grubby.  This is what they looked like when we brought them in:

A couple of washing-up bowls of black water later, they looked like this:

A bit better.  Today I started stripping them with the hot air gun.  I love removing paint, it's nearly as enjoyable as peeling nail varnish off.  I used Nitromors for the metal bit where the handle goes (there must be a proper name for that, is it escutcheon?), I love using that as well, especially the sound it makes when it starts blistering the paint.

This is what they look like now

One is going to be the door from the kitchen to the music room and the other is going to be the door to the understairs cupboard.  There's still quite a lot to do to them, but I quite enjoy this kind of job. 

Talking of the music room, this is what it looks like at the moment

 

Not exactly beautiful but believe it or not this is significant progress as it's now ready to be re-plastered.  

I love looking at houses on estate agents' websites; I call it property porn.  It's a brilliant source of inspiration, much better than magazines as I can see what people have done to houses similar to mine.  I was struggling to imagine what the room would be like when finished and how much space we would have, but then I saw this on Right Move.

This house is in the next road over from mine.  Shows how slow the housing market is - you can see a fire burning in the grate!  Can't wait until my room looks more like this.

Hope you've all had a nice weekend too.