More nice household historic surprises

As in The Gift That Keeps On Giving, we found something unexpected and quite nice (considering our geeky interest in architectural history).

With the intention of stripping and staining the doors and woodwork, we used a heatgun to blister the paint to scrub off with a wire brush.  The first chips to come off tested positive for lead and the first door turned out not to have any primer on it — the bottom most layer of paint was resistant to our efforts to safely remove it so I took the door outside where I could safely use higher heat (volatilised lead dispersed to the outside and not in where we would breathe it).

The cool find was the original hardware in good working condition (once most of the paint was picked out of the brass).  We thought the door knobs and trim were probably metal but, on removal, found them lightweight.  Scraping away some of the paint to expose the plastic, we then ran some hot tap water over it and a diagnostic formaldehyde odour emanated — it is Bakelite (ten years after it was patented and 20 before its peak use in manufacturing).

There is still a bit of paint to get out of the latch mechanism and off some of the Bakelite bits.