The Doors

Because I wanted, but could not afford real wood, period doors, I started very early in the project to haunt The Rebuilding Center, Hippo Hardware, and Rejuvenation House Parts looking for used doors that would fill my needs. In fact I started looking well before I had my permits in hand. In total, I wanted ten doors: three matching pocket doors for the main confluence; a single, narrower pocket door for the bathroom; a front door; and five closet doors.

I got specifications and sizes from the contractor for what would and would not be acceptable for each door or set of doors -- especially important for the pocket doors. Because my needs were very specific, I also had a deadline for when I must give up and go with the cheeper doors that were specified in the contract.

After a month or so of looking every weekend, I got very very VERY lucky at Hippo. As I understand it they were dismantling a hotel in Woodburn and a whole lot of matching doors of various sizes were coming in. Even better, most of them were varnished rather than painted (including all the doors I chose.

Unfortunately, at the same time, it began to look like the project itself would not go forward because of the mounting costs. I held off on buying the doors, although I visited them regularly to make sure the ones I wanted were still there.

As soon as the project got a green light I went down and purchased all the inside doors for the project. We also decided at this point tat the size of the closet would be determined by the size of the doors available rather than the other way around.

They are not perfect, with the kind of wear that a door in use develops over time, but that is what I wanted, an addition that will blend into the old house I already have. However I did have to pick through what was available and make sure that they didn't have any major damage or structural flaws.

All the doors will be converted to different hardware than they had originally, so there are holes that will need to be dealt with.

The first step was to remove the original varnish, which was not in very good shape. This left me with doors that were still quite a bit darker than I wished ...

... so I bleached them. It was more difficult than I expected to get the bleach to work evenly but as you can see it made a huge difference to the color of the doors.

Because they were fairly beat up along the edge after years of use, and they are intended to close to each other, I had 1/4" trimmed of each edge of each door to clean them up. Very soon the four pocket doors were stripped, bleached, trimmed and lightly sanded.

The next step was to deal with the holes where the original hardware had been. The problem was not only the holes for the knob, etc but the large slot where the lock set had been. This made a fairly weak area right where I would put the pull so I wanted to be sure and fill it.

I decided to inset some pieces of mahogany I got at a garage sale years ago and create a visual plate for the door pull. I had the mahogany split so that the pieces were about 1/8" thick and cut to a consistent size.

Then I measured the space where I routed and chiseled out a slot for each panel on both sides of the door.

Once that was done it was a matter of glueing and clamping the panels in place.

Unfortunately, the panels do not stand out visually as much as I expected by themselves.

To highlight the inset more (and cover up my own lack of skill in making the slot) I inset a contrasting border around each one.

Having the panels in place created a closed pocket in the edge of each door which I filled with Fixall -- recommended by my contractor. This will make the edge of the door more sturdy, an important factor since I still have to install side and edge pulls in this area.

Once the hole was filled, I added a final inset on the edge of the door to cover it as well. I looked at a lot of different kinds of hardware for pulling the door out of the wall. All of them were larger than I wanted, had moving parts, and were expensive. In fact, for a while, I thought I'd be spending more for the hardware than I did for the door itself.

After considering the problem from several angles, I decided to simply use one of the holes already in each door. I inserted the brass plate from a dead bolt under the mahogany inset to create a sturdy "lip" and ended up with a finger hole rather than any fancy kind of door pull. They work fine.

The last step on each door will be to deal with those larger flaws that cannot be sanded out or fixed. I am not worried about the small ones. In fact I want them. I'm not interested in perfection. The house is old and well used and I want the new part to match the character of the old. I also want uniqueness and art.

As an example, there was a deep gouge at the base of the bathroom door.

My solution was based on the Japanese habit of using a leaf to patch torn shoji screens and also continues the decorative leaf pattern that I started in the bathroom floor. I created random leaves out of wood panels or veneer to cover the flaws I felt were too egregious. I used a collection of decorative woods I had acquired variously.

I drew a leaf that would cover the flaw onto contact paper, cut it out and applied it to the wood selected for that particular inset. The pieces were cut out with a coping saw and pieced together.

The resulting leaf was taped together and used as a template to determine the area that would be chiselled out.

The leaf was then inset into the space.

Variations on the same concept will be done for all of the flaws that bother me.

Once all the flaws were decorated, then the whole door was stained and varnished, and the hardware was applied.

The hardware for each door includes a flush bolt making it possible to lock the door in place when it is open. There will also be a plate in the floor to lock the bolt into. This way, I'm hoping that each door can be set firmly and independently of the others. For consistency's sake the bathroom door has the same kind of lock.

During the process of preparing the inside doors I made an appointment with the contractor to look at a door from the same lot as a potential front door. The larger doors are fairly substantial and he agreed that I could certainly use one as my front door, especially since I was getting a good solid storm door to use with it. So I trotted back down to Hippo Hardware and got another of the large doors, stripped it and bleached the inside surface. I did not bleach what will be the outside of the door because I plan to paint it. Then it went off to be inserted into a frame and came back as one unit to be installed.

When the weather started to turn, I put the first two coats of paint on the outside of the front door to protect it. The color matches the detail color on the outside of the house. The door will be finished in the spring (hopefully) when the weather is good again. I intend for the inside of this door to match the pocket and closet doors in style.