Door Project: progress

Pictures by Sam Osborne

We began repairing the brick door opening on the front door this weekend.  At the beginning of the weekend we were still not sure if the mortar would be sufficiently sticky, or how to make it more sticky, to hold the patch bricks to the existing wall, and we weren't sure how many bricks we would have to remove in order to create a sound opening.  We had also not worked through a strategy to create nailing surfaces.  A lot of uncertainty. 

Our progress in three steps:

1.  Broken bricks, crooked wall, cavities in the wall.

2.  We removed several rotten bricks  as a unit and laid up some tied-together layers.  The mortar stuck.

3.  We moved up and left to demolish and rework another tied-together unit.

We also made our first and second attempt at fashioning a nailing surface. 

 

Shimming out the nailing block.  Unfinished black walnut, riven timber.  Pulled from the wall and moved to a more suitable spot.

Nailing block to hang the trim in center of view.  Hewn from a discarded tobacco barn timber.

Next weekend we plan to finish the final courses on the same door side and move to the other side of the door opening.  The moment of truth came when the wooden door jamb fit back in the newly snug opening.  Hopefully this trend continues.  It was an exciting time. 

This next weekend will likely be our last full weekend of work on the house.  We may be back up again before the holiday period to do some winterizing and smaller maintenance jobs (or to finish whatever we don't get done next weekend).  Please feel free to leave us a message (here or on facebook) if you want to come visit. 

Thanks for reading. 

(NS)