New Doors for a Beautiful Home

Back in September I wrote 2 blogs (Sept 9th and the 24th ~ see below) about some custom doors for a home being built on the Redwood Coast.  Well the building is closed in now and we're building the exterior doors.  They will have 3 different designs.  Two simpler doors on the lower floor will have a nice design with a 4 lite top half.  The Great Room doors will have a bit more of a "flowing" design with arched top panels and 9 lites of Seedy Reamy insulated glass.  The grand entry will have another elegant door with arched top panels, nine lites, a dentil shelf, and beveled glue chip glass.  The entry will also have two sidelights and an arched transom with a strained glass Coastal scene by Zoleta Lee Designs.  Below are some progress pictures of the house.  Work on it has been stopped for the winter but work has been ongoing with the doors.  More to come soon!

 

 

 

 

Walking around the property, looking at all the preparations, walking through the rough framed home, and imagining just where the doors will hang for decades to come........ pretty cool.  Years of planning, earth moving, layout, milling logs, drying that lumber, and starting construction shows the love and care that is going into this gentleman's future dream home.

The garage and generator buildings are used to store building materials.  All of the site-sawn lumber was graded on site and air dried in a custom drying shed, pre-sealed and oiled on site, then stored under reflective tarps until it time to be used on the home.

Click on Any Image to Enlarge

The home will over look the meadow below, a forest to the East, and the Pacific Ocean is less then a mile to the West.  On a clear day the blue Pacific gleams on the horizon, inviting the viewer to hours of staring into the “future” with an afternoon of peaceful thoughts.

Months ago the owner started sorting out different designs for his doors.  Taking what he already had on the structures he had on his property, he added little details and varied designs.  I think I drew 3 or 4 different designs for the lower doors and his Great Room doors.  We changed some of the sizes, due to framing changes, and settled on the final designs.  Custom really means custom.

The owner has decide on Ribbon Grain VG Mahogany with figured Old Growth Redwood panels.  Some of the glass will be clear and some will be a textured art glass, called Seedy Reamy.  All of the glass will be tempered and insulated.


For more unique custom doors please visit our Website.

 

Soooo .... Let's Build-a-Door

I thought it might be informative to show a few pictures of the process of making a custom door.  This segment will be devoted to creating the door. 

I start with rough sawn 2” thick material that I cut oversized then the finish piece 

I joint each piece on its’ face to make it true and straight.  Then I surface each piece down to a 1-13/16” thickness.  After the rough lumber is surfaced, I joint an edge to make the stock straight and square.  Then each piece is cut to width and length and sized to my calculations for each piece.  I then layout the mortise pockets and the dowels, which I make myself out of Mahogany or White Oak (these woods don’t rot like commercial Birch dowels)

When all of the pieces are ready for assembly, they are laid out over the bench an pre-glued 3 times with the exterior glue I’ve used for 30 years without a failure. 

 

 After every piece is pre-glued, we start putting the door together from the bottom to the top.

When all of the pieces are put together we go to extraordinary efforts to clamp the door, flatten all the joints, and clamp the pieces from side to side and top to bottom.

Then I start cutting out the sidelights, two, and the process happens all over again

Each door is constructed with the same methodical steps, never taking short cuts or making compromises in the construction of each door, sidelight, or transom.

oh ........ by the way ...... the same attention to detail goes into each interior door, garden gate, or driveway entry gate.

There is this reminder on my shop wall,
                                 “if you don’t do it right the first time, when will you have time to do it over”

Please visit Our Site and my Door Gallery to view the actual construction of over a hundred doors.  I build a web site for each client to view the construction of their individual door(s), and it offers you a chance, to see for yourself, the craftsmanship and care that goes into each door.

CLICK HERE to return to my site.