One of the last items on the exterior is the rehabbing of the garage doors. Previously, we'd considered rebuilding the doors with the siding we'd purchased from Eichler Siding. While this might still be an option, it's a mighty undertaking: (1) they're crazy heavy, (2) they work well and (3) they've been in place for 40 years... and it might be one of those "if it ain't broke" situations... so for now, we're trying to save the existing doors even though the siding isn't a perfect match smoothness-wise. But that's what we're now trying to remedy.
Thanks to Jacob and TJ for scraping a good bit of the paint off of the doors -- a much needed first step. Then, re-grooving the lost grooves was in order. The old grooves were more shallow and had already lost a good bit of depth from layers of paint. I tried several methods: scraping, solvent, Dremel...
The Dremel tool wandered too much and caused more damage than otherwise. Had I set up a track to guide it, it'd be ideal (straight, uniform depth, even width), but there are a lot of grooves to be setting up a track for each groove would be too time consuming (might as well rebuild the doors with clean siding).
Nothing has worked quite as well as the Rockwell SoniCrafter which
was a gift from Casie's dad. Similar to a Fein MultiMaster, it vibrates
at a high velocity for cutting, sawing, grinding, etc. and using the
grout removal attachment, I'm able to get into the grooves and clear
them out. It's a slow process, but it seems to be working.
Hopefully by day's end, we'll have matching garage doors.
Oh, and the handle-hardware: who know it was wrought-iron looking? An odd craftsman touch, methinks.