Here’s the deal: our basement bathroom has a door that, when opened, bangs into a soffit on the ceiling. This means that the door doesn’t fully open and is often “in the way” of traffic flow in the basement. I’d like to move the hinges to the other side and have the door swing open from the opposite jamb (the current latch-side jamb). This would keep the door out of the way and it won’t bang into the soffit. It seems like a simple thing but the more I look at it, the more issues I seem to find: Do I just flip the door upside down and reverse the lockset? Do I need to cut a new space for the hinges on the receiving jamb and do the same for the lock on the opposite side? Some of this seems obvious but it would be nice to have some reassurances for stuff I might be missing. Any suggestions, short of having a door-less bathroom would be appreciated.
When your house is as small as ours, there are not a lot of “discoveries” – old pieces of furniture in the attic left by a previous owner, concealed art glass windows, old newspapers or plans in the rafters - so when I make a discovery, no matter how small it is, I tend to get excited.
In between stripping stints on the bedroom door, I started stripping the hardware for that door. I boiled vinegar and poured it over the hinges in a small pyrex dish. I waited several minutes and, with a toothbrush, I started pealing off layers of paint. The first 5 layers came off pretty easily. The last layer was tough and took about an hour to scrape off. I am experiencing the same thing (difficulty in removing the final layer of paint) while stripping the door. It seems like the door and hinges were painted with something different than what they painted the rest of the room with.
After getting down to the actual finish, I saw something very different from the dull, worn, hardware seen throughout the rest of the house. The hinges still have their nice shiny brass plate. It looks great and seems to prove my theory that the entire home was once fitted with polished brass hardware throughout. Some of it still exists on our buffet and there are remnants of shiny bits all over the existing hardware. It would be great to re-plate all of the hardware but unfortunately that isn’t in the budget right now. It sure would look great though.
This might be the only part of the house where I am glad that something original was painted over.