A Happy New Year Hallway

Happy New Year!
I kept at the hallway, trying various stripping methods again. The chemical stripper had it drawbacks - namely that it was a lot of gooey, caustic work that didn't do all the paint layers at once. I'm all for gooey caustic work, but I only want to have to do it once. I found a piece of paper with the instructions on it at the end (naturally) and it even notes that it usually takes 2 applications, and that if you don't scrub all the stripper off perfectly, it will cause premature paint failure.
(She stares at the walls and thinks really positively.)
I reverted back to a heat gun.

*WARNING - DO NOT DO THIS - THIS IS A PRIME EXAMPLE OF DO AS I SAY, NOT AS I DO.*
The ONLY reason I went back to a heat method, and a largely unregulated one at that, is because there are no children in this house and there is only a terribly tiny chance of me becoming pregnant.
I DO NOT ENDORSE ANYONE USE THIS METHOD.
You'd remember that way back I had borrowed Ian's SpeedHeater but ditched that for chemicals. The SpeedHeater I was using was the original style - built for stripping siding. It was bulky and heavy and not particularly maneuverable. I made a tremendous mess with it, but it did work, and it's beauty was that it used a technology that never let the paint heat up too much. I decided to go with the Dumond PeelAway1 chemical stripper to try to make the mess a little more... contained. But that had a lot of drawbacks as mentioned above. Eventually I ran out of stripper, got out my cheep little heat gun (lighter, more precise) and went after the trim again. For the most part I found this to be the sweet spot. The BIG ISSUE with a heat gun is that it very easy to overheat the paint you are stripping and aerosolize the lead. I kept the heat at a level that would juuuuust get the paint to move, thus hopefully keeping the lead under that temperature.
There is a product that SpeedHeater makes called the "Cobra"- a smaller handheld device more akin to a heat gun. I'm told it's awesome, and looking at all the trim and doors that are left I might just bite the bullet and get one.

Anyway, I persevered and got the hallway done!

This is where we were. Chemical stripper everywhere.

This is where we got to - patched ceiling.

Already looking better - smoother anyway!

Chemical stripper only took the first few layers off. Heat gun got me down to what I think was the original olive green layer, which I was content with sanding a bit and painting over.

A good shot of the olive green, looking into the living room.

I needed light in order to deal with sanding the ceiling, so I put my tiny light on a clamp my Dad got me for Christmas and clamped it to the door frame. Thanks Dad!

I skipped stripping the trim around the door to the office. (I did sand it a little). It was fairly tight and there were no obvious big paint blisters that I could see.

Sanding. That black box on the wall is a cold-air intake for the furnace. I have changed the filters after I was done sanding - they were filthy.

These two little round scars were down on the baseboard. No idea what they were - maybe door bumpers for the closet.

It's really hard to get a good picture of the beaded trim. This little groove runs up the verticals on all the doors at the front of the hallway, but not on the back (toward the dining room).
This makes a great deal of sense - you'd put the pretty stuff up front where visitors would see it.

If I were to cut a cross section of the trim, it would look something like this, but the outside bead on the corner would be a little rounder.

Primed!
Oh hey... what about the door?

We'll just paint it to match!

Not that you can tell from this picture, but I painted the door to match the walls at the last minute. Cleaned it up nicely. For some reason I had never considered what to do with it when dealing with the rest of the space.

A few things - I'm not in love with this color (Ben Moore "Classic Grey"). It's really warm, and is scanning as beige in this space. It's not bad, it's just not... I dunno. It's not doing it for me. I had gotten a gallon of this color for the office, and didn't need nearly a gallon. Because I had so much, I decided to use it in the hallway too rather than buy more paint. It is the "pearl" finish - and it is way more shiny than is ideal in this hallway of ... character-full... horsehair plaster walls.
But it's clean and it's done.

What else have I been up to?
Let's go to the pictures, because I can't remember! (And this is why I take pictures of lots of things.)

Got that little door in the middle sanded, painted and rehung with cleaned or new hardware.
Pulled off the far right door after this picture and dragged it down to the basement for refinishing.

I'm putting liftoff hinges back on this so it matches everything else at this end of the house, so I had to fix the holes where a set surface hinges had been slapped on. Toothpicks and wood glue to the rescue!

The best tool I found to take off the toothpicks - bullnose nippers.

Got the last closet door downstairs and broke off the bottom of the handle trying to remove it.
Super bummer. Luckily Blake #1's aren't terribly rare, so I can replace it if I absolutely can't make it work.

This calls for a beer (that will give you a hangover if you're not careful and hydrated going in.)

OHH!! My back ordered doorknob washers and set screws came in!
Now I can fix all my wobbly knobs! (Doorknob washers are particularly difficult to get your hands on I've found. I got these through "House of Antique Hardware".)

A new washer (on top) and an old steel washer (bottom). The new ones are significantly thicker.

And then you think "Hey, let's try these keys that are supposed to work on 90% of doors!" and you find out these doors are the 10% of doors. Then you have to take the whole assembly apart  to try to get the key out.

I figured since it was apart, let's take the lock assembly apart to clean it and see what's going on in here that wouldn't allow the key to turn. Well, it's the wrong key. The little knob at the tip of my thumb is what was keeping me from being able to get it out.

My Mom got me beautiful curtains and rods for the office for Christmas, which I put up.

My sister gifted me a set of pretty lace curtains that I've put up in my bedroom, and spurred me to actually order the cellular shades for this room that I've been thinking about for the last 6 months.

That last closet door was stripped (left side) and then sanded smooth (right side).
Having an attachment for the sander to hook up to the shopvac has cut down on some of the dust.

All sanded and getting primed.

One thing you might have noticed way back at the beginning is that there's a closet in the first floor hall - a 4-panel door that matches almost all of the rest of the 1st floor doors. Later in the pictures it's been replaced with a curtain. I had pulled it off thinking I'd give it a light sand and a coat of paint and be done with it.
No. No, no.
These 4-panel doors will not make it to the basement for refinishing without something getting damaged (probably me). I had hauled it out to the driveway and put it up on sawhorses when I discovered that sanding alone wasn't going to cut it, and at least the front panel of this door would need to be stripped.
5.
Hours.
Later.
I got 90% of just the front of it stripped. It was cold out. I had not intended to be out there that long. I hadn't intended it to become A Thing. My feet were cramping and my shoulders and right arm were screaming at me. I had lost the daylight and it had started to snow lightly.
(This is why I'm looking at the SpeedHeater Cobra, because like Ian said "it would be hard to strip anything much slower.")
The weather is supposed to be good tomorrow, so I'm going to drag it back out and finish it up. Just a few more sections of paint to come off (hopefully less than 2 hours worth), a buzz with the sander (and the inset panels with some hand blocks) and hopefully I can get it back in and primed to get it up tomorrow or Wednesday. 

Due to HR vacation shinnanigans at work, I wound up having to take a bunch of time off or loose it at the end of last year/beginning of this year. I haven't had this much time off since I was unemployed almost 15 years ago - I might as well put it to good use if I'm not going anywhere exciting!