Well I have some good news and some bad news.
The good news is those little plastic bushings at the four corners of the fridge door are still available. It appears they may be sort of a common replacement part for perhaps many applications, as I found them quite easily at the specialty bins in the home center's hardware aisle. I'll talk about them more later.
The bad news is those sandwiched door assemblies are not as easy to disassemble as I had hoped. I didn't know if it was a solid piece of 1/2" plywood inside, or just a frame. As it turned out it was just a frame and therefore much less glued surface than there could have been. Even so, the glued surface was pretty difficult.
Here's the edge of the door, and every door is the same construction method, albeit maybe less glue on smaller doors. I hope, because I have plans for that wood.
Gently as I could, I used these hand tools to try and break the wood fiber bond of the glue without destroying the thin plywood.
Eventually I ended up with this.
Then choosing the chunk I wanted for the fridge door, I measured to see if I could get good panels for the two lower doors and the one upper door. That is to say, the one remaining upper door, the lower cabinet door and the lower controls cover door.
Cutting out the main fridge panel I had this.
Then after cutting the other doors to approximate size, and 60 grit sanding the surfaces, I had this.
And here you see the original faux embossed panel on the left, compared to the unfinished and rough sanded replacement panel on the right.
But going behind the scenes can reveal the dirty, ugly truths behind the facades we see all around us. Let's check out the backs.
Pretty scary! Well let's see what I can do. I started by cleaning up the splinters with a wire brush, scraper and sand paper. I even used tweezers for specific splinters that were holding broken edges too high. In separating the panel from the plywood during the removal process (mostly a hammer tapped scraper cut) it was pretty hard to see, due to the panels being so close to the sandwich meat. Once I learned a few tricks, the damage lessened somewhat.
This is probably the most damaged of the pieces.
But let's not dwell on the negative, this is supposed to be a happy occasion! Let's not argue about oooo killed oooo. Let's stabilize those negative things in life and accentuate the positive!
I spread wood glue with my fingers into all the nooks and crannies of the damaged areas. It reminded me of finger painting in primary school. I felt the urge to eat paste!
Hmmm, looks like I didn't take a picture of the smoothed glue. Do you think that may be because my hands were messy?
After lunch and the glue was dry enough, I flipped the boards to work on the front sides. I found only six small pin holes (thumb tacks? Push Pins?) to fill. Here's the before and after on one of the smaller doors.
And the after on the main panel.
This time I spread filler with a finger, and sanded with a damp rag.
With the grand-boys coming this week during spring break, I won't get as much done. But I have some extra subjects to address, and pictures already taken, to at least continue a daily post. And I'm certain to get more as the week progresses, I mean - in between bike rides, paper airplanes, kite flying, and maybe a run out to
Independence Rock, an historic pioneer trails landmark and overnight stop, where the boys can climb high onto the steep sandstone surface looking for pioneer names carved into the soft stone!
