Laundry Room Door...Part 2

This project has been a long time coming. Back in January, we purchased an old paneled window door to replace our old louvered laundry room door.  You can read about that purchase on my blog post about it.  We found it at The Old Home Supply House out in Ft. Worth. ($75) I LOVED this place.  Great antiques, a warehouse of old doors and windows, and if you have an older home it's a great way to keep with the era of the home.

It took me so long to complete this project it was absolutely ridiculous!  The main reason being, is because I stripped down the entire door to the bare wood before I painted it. 2 words...big. mistake.  The wood had over 6 layers of paint on it, and judging from the difficulty of the removal, I think the door was an exterior door.  a.k.a. the paint was baked on hard.

One side of the door was white, and the other side was a poopy greenish color.

 

 I had to use hard core Klean-Strip paint stripper and let it sit for a really long time before I was able to peel any of the layers off. With the paneled door it was really difficult getting into each crevice to make sure everything smoothed out.

I spent weeks...WEEKS peeling the paint off of both sides of this door. It was baked on so hard.  I also used wood filler to fill in all of the small holes, and knicks.  I used the sander as little as I needed to.  I started off with Norton 80 grade sand paper in order to strip off as much paint as I could.  I then finished it off with Norton 100 grade smoothing sandpaper. Even still there were a lot of imperfections I just had to live with.  

It was a most glorious day when I was finally able to put the first layer of paint on the door.  I just used Eggshell White Glossy Paint from Home Depot. 

Once the door was painted I used a razor blade to scrape off the glass and get every bit of dust and paint off.  Cheese cloth works so well for making sure that everything is off of the door.

 

I knew I wanted to frost the window, so I got the Rust-oleum Frosted Glass spray in a can.  As you can see from the image below, it didn't turn out so well.  There were specks, and really uneven cloud coverage on the window.  I would not recommend this product for frosting windows at all!  I would probably only use this for small craft projects, not large windows.

The window sucked, so I ended up having to completely 

scrape off the frosting off of the entire window.....not fun. 

I went back to Home Depot and found this little treasure. Artscape Etched Glass peel and stick.  Whoever invented this stuff was genius. I cut out the piece that I wanted for the window (I cut about an inch more than I needed), sprayed the glass with a soap and water mixture, peeled and stuck the adhesive to the surface, and then squeegeed out the soap and water.  The great thing about this stuff is that if you have bubbles, you just peel it off, spray with soap and water, and then start again.  It's absolutely fool-proof.  After I got the adhesive where I wanted it, I used a razor blade to cut it close in to the window so that there weren't any imperfections on the border.  Miracle product, I'm telling you, and very cost effective. They also have many other decorative designs as well.

The vinyl decal I used came off of Etsy from Circle Wall Art.  When I found this design, and fell in love with it, it was originally huge.  I contacted the maker, and asked if they could customize it for my window.  It came all the way from London and was great quality.  It took both husband and I to get the decal level on the glass, this took about 15 minutes by itself. We taped it, and then started scratching.

This decal was pretty easy to apply, but I have to be honest, I was SO nervous peeling this thing off! My one piece of advice when working with vinyl decals...PATIENCE.  

 The great thing about decals is that you can clean right over them with any glass cleaner and they will be fine.  On one side of the glass I had the frosting decal, and on the other, the "laundry" decal. Worked perfect.

We also purchased the door knobs at the home supply store.  I really love glass knobs, and these were perfect. 

 

I totally forgot to take any photos of us changing out the hinges, but we found some black steel ones at Home Depot.  There was such anticipation in getting the door hung back in the kitchen/laundry room.  I squealed when it finally was installed.  Here's a blurry Before & After.  So glad that this project is finally complete. 

I have a lamp in my laundry room and at night it gives a really nice glow through the frosted glass.  Everyone who walks into our house has raved about the door.  Big improvement!