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Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Treasure Hunting Turns Heartache

We recently took a trip to Community Forklift in Maryland, which is this sweet warehouse filled to the brim with old doors, windows, tiles, you name it!  We were in search of an old door that we can re-finish to make a growth chart for our kids.  When my mom was growing up (and when I was, too) we measure ourselves on our grandmother's doorframe, but we didn't pull the doorframe out of the house when my grandparents died and we sold the house.  Since we Beaches are nomads, we wanted to create something we can take with us.
The outside of the Community Forklift

Cool stuff on the outside, from granite to bathtubs

I almost bought this, even though I have nowhere to put it

How to find the perfect door out of 1500?

Jon on the hunt

Hmmm..swap out the hardware?

Avery helps dad put the door on the car

The one we chose!
We love the old 5-panel door that we chose, which needs to be slightly sanded and refinished, but hopefully will keep that vintage vibe.  After looking through all the hardware, we decided to keep what it came with and just refinish that as well.  The goal is to make a great vintage-y growth chart to measure our kids every six months and one that we can take all over the country as we bounce about.

And how did this turn into heartache?  Here's our take on the door just a few hours later when we actually tested it for lead paint:

 Yup, turns out this sucker was covered in lead paint/dust.  It looked like it had just been a cool old wooden door that was stained, but even after a good cleaning, our lead test home kit was still showing there was lead there, and we just can't have a giant piece of lead paint in our house.  Especially one that we smash the kids up against every 6 months or so.  Not cool.  So, we have to change tactics and go with something else.  So glad we wasted a whole day and $20 on that, BUT, it was worth it to see the cool stuff the Community Forklift has!

Lesson:  Always bring a lead test kit to the warehouse before you buy.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

What a cool place!! Hate the lead issue!!! :(

Alison Beach said...

I know! It was truly disappointing, especially since it was a pain in the butt to get that door home.