The Attic: One Room Challenge Week 5

Two big changes started this week, one of which was yet another in a long line of pivots for the house.  But when the house speaks... we tend to listen.  I made a ton of progress both on the restoration of the front window with the new jamb fully assembled, primed, and the exterior moldings cut. And I built the door for the bottom of the stairs.  

With three weeks left in the One Room Challenge, and these big pieces in the works, I'm feeling more confident than ever on getting this wrapped up on the eight week timeline.  There are many other projects of different sizes and scopes to check out here!

Catch up on the previous weeks: Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4

The Window

Earlier this summer, I started stripping and reglazing the original window that existed in the front gable of my house.  For anyone old house folks, there is a great community on Instagram for help!  Between finding the window and needing to make structural changes around the gable with the new roof, I have planned on putting this back for a while.  Honestly, that is a little intimidating.  

But, last summer I messaged with Steve Quillian from Wood Window Makeover and as always I'll chat with Stacy from Blake Hill House about my dream to put this back.  After dreaming and scheming, I had a plan for what to do.  Using the best lumber I could get my hands on, I built a simple box frame that matches the one on the back of the house with this window's twin.  I adjusted the saw to add a 10° pitch on the window sill to allow water to drain.  Now, it's ready to install as soon as I can get the framing in the attic to accommodate it.

The Door

I finally have a door going into the attic!  This has been the biggest challenge for me to nail down, both with the design and the materials.  Our biggest issue is that the door opening is only 27" wide.  Not very big for a typical door, still not too difficult to modify... 
But all the doors in the dining room are 7' tall instead of the typical 6' 8" or a fancy door at 8' or 9' tall.  Finding the size I needed was proving to be next to impossible.

My plan was to cut down our old front door to make it narrower, but finding the core was MDF made me worry that cutting the sides down and the middle out would be too big an issue structurally, so I decided to build my own! 

I broke out the biscuit joiner, and ran to the lumber yard to get some red oak to match the rest of the house.  That was more expensive than I imagined it would be, but we made it work.  I checked and doubled checked all the measurements, and I dry fit the rails and stiles together.  Then, I used biscuits to keep it together.  It's holding together really strong.

The Door Glass

Once I got the frame of the door assembled, I needed to add the center panel.  There are a lot of ways to do this, from routing a channel in the rails and stiles to using a rabbit and molding...
Since this was my first full-scale door, I decided to sandwich the plexiglass between nailed in moldings on both sides of the door.  This was how I'd planned to do it with the other door, so I was already ready to do it this way.  Plexiglass was also selected instead of glass for its flexibility in case anyone falls down the stairs.  For real glass, this would have to be safety glass: which was far out of our budget for this project.

With three different door styles in the area, I didn't want to add a fourth.  I knew the dimensions of the door glass should work with at least one of the doors I already had.  I could match the front door, the hall and closet doors, or the -uninstalled- kitchen door.  To maximize the size of the glass, I matched the dimensions of the single-panel kitchen door.  With the doors all installed, the each wall will have matching doors, and all the doors coordinate well.

There is still plenty to do with finishing and installing the door, too.  I nailed the door jamb into the framing, and my next job is to stain the door and install the casings so I can get this door hung.  Once it's in and the original baseboard is back, the dining room should look like this door has always been there.