A couple of members have asked us for updates on what we've been up to on the shop build. Well...most of our time has actually been spent working on our cars, after all that's what we built the shop for! After 3 years of on again, off again building rehab, project fatigue set in but we recently tackled a couple of smaller projects around the shop including the fugly paint booth doors. When we took over the building the paint booth turned out to be a great resource and we've used it extensively for all kinds of parts painting. Following extensive rehab of everything else the doors and surround weren't up to par with the rest of the shop. The doors consisted of 1 1/2" square stock steel ladder frames clad with 1/2" plywood and a makeshift filter system that was "unmaintainable". We did install a fan control system as the Devilbiss cross draft system was too powerful for the size of the booth and painting was difficult.
Paint booth doors circa original demo
Paint booth entry pre-update with deconstruction underway
Not only were the original doors a slap up affair but the door surrounds were equally poorly constructed; a mish-mash of wood and drywall. As the doors weigh more than 100lbs each and were secured by simple gate hinges with cardboard shims no less, its amazing they didn't fail.
Our starting point was to remove the doors, strip the frames and deconstruct the door surrounds then rebuild both. Once the surrounds were stripped we rebuilt them with proper, robust framing better suited to support the weight of the doors. We discovered that the booth had been built out of square (like most everything else in the building...), in this case by about 5 inches! Yikes.
Laser line showing the booth was constructed >5 inches out of square!
Re-framing the door frame supports
Completed woodwork for the door surround
Our resident painter hard at it.
The completed and stained door surround. Aluminum protective trim was added to the header and corner
Efforts then turned to reskinning the doors. Paul favored a diamond-plate design in keeping with the rustic industrial theme of the shop. Doors were stripped to the frame.
Aluminum diamond plate was added by pre-drilling, attaching with self tapping screws and Lepage PL construction adhesive followed by clamps. The blue film is a protective plastic cover that was later removed.
The doors needed a hinge system to attach the doors to the steel tube door frame and to the newly rebuilt wood surrounds. As each side is a different material and width, standard hinges weren't an option. Instead we sourced 4" unplated and undrilled hinges. Using the plasma cutter we cut one side down to to 1 1/2" inches to match the frame while the other side was drilled on the drill press to accept bolts so it could be attached to the wood frame.
We welded the hinges to the steel frame and bolted the other side to the door surround. With the aluminum diamond plate weighing in at maybe 50lbs a sheet these doors are heavy!
Now we need to add filters to the doors. There's nothing commercially available (that I could find) to retrofit the doors for paint booth style filter vents. So we adapted furnace filter vent frames instead that accept regular furnace filters. We cut out the vent holes using the plasma cutter, drilled, bolted then sealed the units in place. Aluminum trim was added around the edge and mesh was added to the filter box front mostly for aesthetics. Looks simple enough however it took a few hours to install.
Furnace filter vent frame
Installed, trimmed and sealed
As there wasn't sufficient room to add a conventional door closer to the top of the door(s) instead we used heavy duty storm door closers that install on the inside of the door frame and to the surround. They handled the weight of the doors no problem.
To finish off the doors we couldn't use just any door handles...so instead I bought a couple of vintage Snap-on combination wrenches and welded threaded tubes to them as standoffs (I still have one to convert) then drilled and bolted through the door skin.
While we were at it, why not add a different style Snap-on wrench (we like our Snap-on!) to serve as the slider handle for the bathroom door we built a couple of years ago!
