Built-in drawers

Bathroom is slowly finishing up as I complete each piece of the built-in. Last weekend it was the small doors so this weekend it’s finishing up the drawers. The drawers get their last coat of Waterlox and after that has dried, they are installed back in. No hardware yet so it’s just a matter of sliding the drawers back in.

Drawers are back in place.

The other remaining part of the built-in are the 2 large doors. 1 door sits waiting stain while I still fight with stripping the paint from the other door. Most of the surface paint is off so it’s mostly using the dental picks to get the white paint out between the joints between each piece of wood. I get pretty far and start washing down the wood using TSP. Things are looking pretty close and I’ll let the door dry out over the week before 1 more scraping of the nooks before starting sanding.

Trying to scrape the remaining white paint from the nooks and crannies in the door.

Stripping the door eats up a ton of time as usual. In between, I finish up the entry door, by installing the hardware. For this I only used shellac and wax as a top coat instead of Waterlox. Mostly because I didn’t want to wait the 3 days for each coat of Waterlox to cure and just be done with this. Also, the pieces are small enough that I don’t think it looks too different to be using a different top coat. I pick up some small slotted screws from Ace Hardware and get the doorknob along with the hardware all secured.

That’s it for the bathroom as I move to the upstairs to continue work on stripping the calcimine from the plaster. This is a serious of filling a bucket of water with TSP and dish soap and wiping down the walls. Then when the calcimine is moistened, I use a scraper to get a chunk of it off. Then I use Brillo pads to get rid of the rest of the residue followed by lots of wiping with a sponge.

All of the paint debris after scraping.

Before

After

Slow and steady progress.