Pi-Pa-Pocket doors - Part II

And it's back to the pocket doors (Although the yard is calling my name. Loudly. And the weather is gorgeous!)!

As excited I am about having them, I'm just not that excited about having to paint them. I know it'll be so worth it but after painting so much trim and so many doors already, it's one of those projects that I'm having a hard time finding the excitement for. Oh woe is me! *imagine dramatic hand to forehead pose*

Anyways, my pretty babies are now patched, caulked, sanded and primed and ready for some fresh paint. Here is a in-progress shot that shows the yellow patches of wood filler where I smoothed over dings and scratches on my second time around.

I then decided to venture on another detour before painting the doors and love a little on the original hardware. I globbed on some paint remover to get rid of some old paint built-up along the edges of the hardware, waited and scraped off the gluey mess.

As always, the first layer of yellowed off-white paint doesn't budge at all. That was quality paint, back then, I'm telling you. None of that wimpy Latex they are selling these days. After cleaning up the hardware I tried to prime around it. Yeah, well, that didn't work so great. There was just no good way of doing a good job painting around the hardware so after a few moments spent grumbling, I checked the screws, grabbed the right kind of screw driver and send a prayer to Heaven.

The escutcheons came off without a hitch!

I don't know what I expected to find underneath but I sure did not expect to see raw wood once I removed the hardware. And if the smell isn't fooling me, it's pine wood to boot. A quick sanding and after almost a 100 years, this spot received its first coat of primer ever.

Hier is a closer look at the original hardware from our pocket door. It's so pretty!

On the back you can see how shiny the brass once was. Over the years it has developed a beautiful patina.

Eventually, I did get around to start laying on a fresh coat of paint. Here are the first few shots that show the first coat going up on the dining room side. Of course, I'm still not finished. Tonight I hope to finish coat no. 1 in its entirty and adding coat no. 2 over the weekend. There's a German saying that basically says that "good things take their while" so yes, this is taking a while but it's looking good.

Did you paint anything lately? [<- See that? That's a trick questions :o) ]