39 Architraves

Architraves: 24 July / 4 October 2017

Bulk of the work on the timbers wre at the architraves and skirtings.
It was a huge job though it never got boring.

The architraves are made from Colour and Hearth Rimu and obviously the borer has found and eaten all softer bits in the Colour.
Door architraves still had the original varnish finish which I scraped and sanded off.

Throughout the house about 4 different profiles were used at the doors.
The extent of borer damage was considerable and the majority of door architraves had damage at at least one end.
I reassembled borer-free architraves from undamaged pieces of the original architraves.
I succeeded in retrieving original profiles to all door sets facing the Hall and the Entry Hall.

Please note:
One left, one right and one top architrave can only be assembled to a set of architraves if the profiles match.
Every interior door has 2 sides and therefore also 2 sets of architraves; the profile of each side can differ however.
At the end it is preferred to have identical sets of architraves facing a room, over having identical sets of architraves at both sides of a door.

The front door architraves profiles are longer and and are much wider.
I have put quite an effort in trying the reassemble the badly damaged, left hand side, front door architrave.
However I was not happy with the final result; once the architraves were oiled.

The window architraves were all painted and because there were only 2 different profiles (the original and the 1930's alteration one) the puzzle was much easier.
The architraves at both large front windows had become redundant and could be reused at the side windows.
Architraves for the 4 "new" double-sashed front windows always will have to be re-run, which makes it is easy to run a few extra if necessary.

The door and window architraves were oil finished before being put back into storage.Shortly after finishing the architraves I found 20 matching door architraves on Trademe for a bargain, including one set matching the front door profiles.

The find makes up for all missing architraves and is regarded a reward for the hard work.