Dunny Door

I feel that I've had to leap ahead in the logical order of doing things in the bathroom. I need to get all the wiring in place prior to lining the whole area and that means constructing part of the wall that separates the bathroom from the aisle. But I can't complete this wall until I've got the toilet in because it won't fit through the door. And the toilet needs to be installed after the tiling has been done, which needs to happen after the waterproof membrane has been applied which has to happen after the lining is completed! So I've opted to hanging the bathroom door and building the frame for it so that I can get the wiring done before moving back to finishing the lining.

I managed to get two toilet doors from an old QR carriage now on display at the Waltzing Matilda Centre in Winton. When there several years ago I noticed that the doors had been removed from the carriage and were surplus to their requirements so I negotiated the purchase of them. Getting them to Sydney was an interesting challenge (they are particularly heavy) and involved a mate of mine who is conducting palaeontological field work in the area. He and his students got them to Brisbane for me then we freighted them to Sydney from there.

The newly-hung door in the open position

Building the frame was relatively straight forward but proceeded slowly and with caution. The most difficult part of actually hanging the doors was setting the hinges. These are the original and are spring loaded so I had to get creative to find a way to hold them open while holding the door in place to screw them in position.

Come on in!

Although they had been unattached from the doors, the previous owners kindly included all the fittings and screws so I was able to put these back on, giving that authentic look.

"I'm in here!"

The other door is destined to become a bedroom door in the aisle in front of the bathroom. I'll probably restore that one but I think this one has loads of character in the battered varnish and timber work and the odd bit of graffiti scratched into it - so I'm going to leave it alone.

The frame work is a simple composite structure built up from 42x19 and 68x19 Maranti from Bunnings. All glued and screwed

The aisle side of the frame work will be varnished so all screw heads have been lost and dowels inserted over them. That and a good dose of filler on the joins and I'll leave the whole lot to set for a week or two before cleaning off the protruding dowels, sanding and revealing the finished look. Stay tuned!

The framework looking the other way showing an abundance of filler and protruding dowels