Door Trim: Master Bedroom

This afternoon I removed the door trim from around the inside of the master bedroom door.  It took me 30 minutes, including clean up.  Not bad.  But what's the old saying?  Demolition is the easy part?

It went astonishingly fast.  First I used a razor knife to break the seal of the caulk.  One thing I've learned living here is that some owner before me really loved caulk as the fix-all.  My goodness it's everywhere.

Then I used a hammer and a cat's paw and moved up and down the side trim, and with very little effort I was able to pop it off all in one piece.  I took off the strip above the door next.

In this close up photo you can see the end of the horizontal tongue and groove boards, (well, really it's tongue and tongue... lol, there's not really a groove...) and the infamous linen vapor barrier that is nailed in place.  It all feels really solid and it's bone dry with no evidence of water leaks.  Excellent.

I was worried that when the trim was off, I'd being saying "hello" to my crawl space -- along with any living creatures that may call it home --but thankfully that isn't the case.  The space doesn't have my hardwood floors in it, but it's some type of wood:

The important thing here is that something is there other than a dark and breezy hole that goes under my house.  In this photo you can also see a horizontal piece of trim sticking out from behind my baseboards.  Who knows what version of baseboards that is from...

Here's a view of the top left corner:

Again, wisps of the vapor barrier and some dust.  Considering this space hasn't seen the light of day since 1929, a bit of dust is just fine with me.  We found.... other things when baseboards were pulled off.  I'll just leave it at that... (although two of the "other things" were two old black and white photographs -- THAT was super cool.  I should scan and post those so you can see them...)

Would you agree that we are all grateful for different things at different times?  The thing I am grateful for this afternoon is that nothing skittered out from anywhere.  In my book (on my blog?) that makes a successful project kick off!  Here's the last photo, with the trim off all three sides:

(My closet door is a mirror, that's why you see what looks like a second door on the left)

The quandry now is, do I continue and take off the door frame?  (Door jamb?)  My current thinking is no.  I think it makes more sense to wait until I have a new door to put in.  That way I don't have to mess around with hanging each door twice.  I've never hung a door, but I've heard that it can be tricky, and since nothing in my house is square or level to begin with, I think I'll just delay that fun for the next phase of the project...

I'm excited to have this project underway.  We'll see how excited I remain when I start cutting sheetrock to fit... but it already feels better to have some of the old paint gone.  Recall my friend up the street who also owns a very old house, and who, when she replaced her baseboards said, "Now any dirt I find behind the baseboards is OUR dirt"?   When I told her I was pulling off door trim covered in 81 years of paint, she said"Liberating."  Yes, yes it is.  Nevermind that I have 12 16 door sides to do... that's a lot of liberation.