I am on day four of "The Door Project". We live in a historic house (c. 1857) and we do not have central air. We use a window A/C unit in the bedroom so we can sleep in August. It occurred to us a few years back that we could also put a window unit in the kitchen to make meal preparation tolerable, if only we had a door between the kitchen and the dining room (and hence the rest of the house). Apparently, there was a door at one time, but it disappeared sometime over the last 162 years.
We couldn't just order a new door if we wanted it to look like the other historic 4-panel doors in the house. So, for about two years we went to antique home salvage places and such, looking for a door that matched. Eventually, we found one by the side of the road a few blocks from the house. Someone had put it out for big trash day. No hardware, layers of old alligatored paint and also a little too big for the door frame. We took it anyway and it had been sitting in the garage since last fall, waiting for my retirement.
On Tuesday, I spent hours scraping all the layers of paint off. Wednesday, I filled all the holes with wood putty and sanded it. Thursday, I measured it and the door frame about a dozen times and then cut it to size with a circular saw and a ten foot piece of angle iron clamped to the door as a fence. I then fitted some vintage hardware that I've had down in the cellar for the last 27 years in case it ever proved useful. I fit the door to the frame, planed down a few spots to account for the fact that nothing in this old house is ever quite straight, final sanded and hung the door. Today, I am painting it a slightly different color on each side to match the trim in that room.
And to think people asked me what I would possibly do all day after I retired.