1920's Era Cabinet Doors With Divided Lights

A young man with a storage shed filled with his various vintage and older collections (great junk) had a garage sale at his parent's home last weekend. 


We weren't the first to arrive, there were lots of spaces empty on the tables and tarps on the grass. He had made a rain shield by attaching ropes to one end to his truck and the other to his parent's garage door and built two U shape frames and draped tarps over the frames to keep his tables and furniture dry.


Two multi-paned  windowed cabinet doors were left - flaking white paint, rot on the bottom of one door, missing multin pieces, doors embellished with old spider webs holding bits and pieces of dried out 'things'.

Below is the 'work in progress' .

DH has worked on making these windowed cabinet doors structurely solid. Vacuuming was involved for the various flakes and messes from the doors. My job on this project has been to find things and clean.


Didn't take a 'before' of the really dirty glass and blizzard of flaking paint. 

Repairs to the individual (divided glass) lights - 9 mitered muntins (short molding pieces) were needed, 5 were missing in addition to the 4 little pieces that fell off one cabinet door as we moved the doors. Picked them up from the grass fortunately.

  The doors were most likely originally built-in cabinet doors for a dining room back in the days when carpenter's made built-in furniture. The doors are probably from the 1920's era and are probably from a craftsman style house. They were most likely custom made in a sash and door company, made out of Douglas Fir, in British Columbia.

One glass door pull was left on a door (and it is so rusted on that it doesn't want to leave). Love the age/use patina of this piece.

'Little pieces of wood that may be useful sometime in the future' were out in the shed and were brought in to see if they would be the right size and depth for repairs. Worked.

Cut to length and mitered the muntins (the little pieces) were each attached with a single nail. That allows the individual pieces of glass to be removed if  4 muntins are removed in case the glass breaks.
   
The bottom on one cabinet door needed glued and clamped and reinforced because the doors had been stored in the heat/damp of a shed for so long that the original glue had disintegrated.

 
While the doors were stored a shed they did absorb moisture and started to rot. This repair has been started but is not yet finished.

A top piece of wood that had to be removed was part of the original structure - right side of the above door (but cut flat now). More work is needed before this cabinet door can be re-purposed.

Mystery doors to be made useful again.

More to come.

Below - built in cabinets from a 1916 Sears Kit House on Flicker.

Perhaps the two we are working on were  doors for dining room built-in storage.

Our project is not finished so I will either add photos later or write another post on how the repaired divided light cabinet doors look when they are re-purposed.

 

Thank you for visiting today.

Sharing with:

Thursday
Sincerely Paula,   Katherine's Corner,  Stacey Embracing Change, This Autoimmune Life,   Try It Like It,  The Painted Hinge,  A Delightsome Life, 

Friday
Reviews, Chews and How To's,   Under A Texas Sky,   Two Chicks and a Mom,  Unique Junk,  
A Fire Man's Wife,  Shabby Art Boutique, Crafts a la Mode,  Funky Junk Interiors,  Hello Little Home, 
A Cottage Market,

Saturday
Pieced Pastimes,    How Sweet The Sound,  Pam's Party and Practical Tips,  Scrapality,   Our Mini Family,  One More Time Events, 

Sunday
Little Farmhouse,  Nifty Thrifty,  Finding Silver Pennies,  DIY Show Off,  Rustic and Refined,  Normandy Life, 

Monday
Dwellings The Heart of Your Home,  Home Stories A to Z,   Celebrate and Decorate,  Cedar Hill Farmhouse, 

Tuesday
A Stroll Through Life,   Stone Cottage Adventures,  Knick of Time, 

Wednesday
To Grandma's House We Go,  Raggety Bits,