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.

 

The Challenge of Contemporary and Conservation ..... with style!

Question:
  How do you make a modern contemporary door using salvaged, recycled, and green materials ?

That was the question that I had to ask myself with a challenge of solving that situation while creating beautiful door.

"the rest of the story!"

    I was asked by a local contractor, known as Rosenthal ~ Thorton Construction, if I could make a door similar to a sketch provided by their designer, Ron Press.

My first response was ......... SURE ......... then the caution sign started flashing and the sirens started getting louder.  Why you ask ?  Back in the 1400’s most of the doors were plank style doors made of boards attached together to fill the hole in the wall.  Cut lumber, even though it is no longer growing,  still swells and shrinks due to seasonal and climatic changes.  This can mean that several boards fastened together would swell up in the rainy season and actually bind so tight that the plank door would swell to the point of not opening without a stiff shoulder and a running start.  So that is the primary reason for developing a frame-and-panel door that really has only the outside boards that will swell and shrink.

So there must be a solution .......... and there is.

Take a 100% recycled waterproof substrate (core), edge it with Redwood (2”), on all four sides, and face it with  book-matched thick veneers that give the plank appearance, but won’t swell and shrink during seasonal changes.

Now before you think of the postcard thin mass-produced veneers, as seen on most doors and furniture these days, think of slices of wood about 5/16” thick.   We sawed these planks from vertical grain Old Growth Redwood lumber 

                            

Then we take these thick veneers and make two large sheets and adhere these beautiful pieces of wood  to the inner core made of  recycled material.  This material will have to remain a “secret” for now, but it’s pretty cool! These faces we adhered with my ever faithful waterproof glue in a vacuum press.  This press is like a giant “seal-a-meal” that exerts 1750 lbs of pressure on every square inch of surface.  And I keep these pieces  in my press for at least 72 hrs (3 days), until it is fully cured.

Next, after sanding, came the the inlay of a 3” wide stainless steel strip, on each side.  This was “sorta” tricky, but we got it done and each piece wraps both ends and is affixed with stainless steel screws.

By the way, 90% of the consumer market stainless steel come from recycled sources.

“According to the International Stainless Steel Forum; unlike other recyclable materials, 85% - 95% of stainless steel does wind up being recycled - very little winds up in landfill. The is  because stainless steel is so precious and durable.” (Sourcing http://www.greenlivingtips.com).

Last but not least, we found stainless D handles that we mounted on both sides.  They wanted handles that mounted without visible mounting brackets and we found this hardware through a wonderful online company called KnobDeco (http://www.knobdeco.com).  I think you’ll agree these handles are like candles on the cake!

If you are interested in viewing more of this door, please visit our Door Gallery and check out The Sea Cliff Entry.

I also would like to invite any questions you may have regarding custom doors, gates, or stained glass.

I wanted to share some photos

While I'm waiting to show you more progress on my house full of doors, I thought I'd share some interesting wood related photos.
    I was walking on the back of my land and noticed the Redwoods needles, from 2 springs ago, was starting to turn brown as it does each fall.  As the winter winds come,  these clumps of Redwood needles blow out of the trees and blanket the earth with a golden brown layer of retired branched needles.  The Pomo Indians say that each winter the Redwoods cry and they call these dead branchs of needles, Redwood Sorrow.

 

Instead of snow, our Coastal forest is blanketed with the Redwood "Sorrow" that returns to the earth to become mulch and nurture our beautiful Redwood forest.

  

Speaking of Redwood, our cousins to the West continent grow a third variety of Sequoia.  It is called The Dawn Redwood.  Wikipedia states "Although the least tall of the redwoods, it grows to at least 200 feet  in height. Local villagers refer to the original tree from which most others derive as Shui-sa, or "water fir", which is part of a local shrine."

   About 20 years ago I planted a dawn Redwood on the edge of our garden and today it is about 35ft tall.  Every fall it looses all of its' needles.  

All of the needles will yellow then fall off and it looks like the tree has come to a fatal end until spring comes and life and foliage returns to this nobel tree.

  We have a western Maple that grows along the Pacific range.  Its' latin name is Acer Macrophillum, Pacific Maple, or Big Leaf Maple.  And this is why.........

These leaves turn yellow, not red or orange, and then turn into this tan shell of a leaf before they return back to compost and nurture the earth.


Another cool picture that I would like to share, is a very thin slice of old growth Redwood.  I cut it off the end of a board and noticed it was so thin you could see light through it......... so I took it outside and shot a picture of this slice held up to the afternoon sun in the Redwood forest.

A simple detail you should know ......... this end cut is 5-1/2" wide by about 1-3/4" tall.  Each line you see, indicates 1 full year of growth.  Part of this trees life grew in such a dark primeval forest, that it took 45 years to grow one inch in diameter.  Imagine these magnificent trees grow up to 20 feet in diameter, and have been on this earth since before the time of Christ.


So, one day my friend Sunray was sawing a 6ft cant (block) of curly Redwood into thick veneers for beautiful panels in our doors. Well it was so heavy that he decided to saw it in half to make it easier to re-saw the thick veneers.  And believe it or not (you really should) when he sawed this 6ft by 8 inch square cant of Redwood in half, he found this......

Yup ......... that is a bullet.  But look carefully that is a bullet that was shot into a young tree, maybe over 100 years ago.  There is no damaged wood behind the bullet and this piece of Redwood was over 120 years old before the tree was logged 40 to 50 years ago, and left on the forest floor for us to find and saw into beautiful veneer, like this

But I saved the the block with the bullet to tell its' story.  If your ever in the neighborhood ask to hold it and have a look for your self.  Can't wait to make "The Bullet Wood Door" for some nice (peaceful) folks!

I've shown this picture before, but take another look.  Here is a picture of the end of a board that was milled for me by a local sawyer.

 

This tree was originally fallen, by a man with an ax.  How very cool.  I'll bet he would be proud that we utilized his hard work and efforts to create a beautiful door to grace a home of a wonderful family.

Then, I'll end with this

This is a picture of some hand split curly Redwood and the cut end of a Buckeye Burl.  Not much more to say other then I love Natures paint brush.

Please visit Our Website to see more of this beautiful wood.

Let's get ready for this project!

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.

Where Does the Salvaged Lumber and Green Sourced Wood come from?

Today we have become aware that all things are finite, except love and eternity!  That includes the forests of the world.  I have 4 grandchildren and I want them to have the opportunity to experience our forests as I have ............ so .............. I think I’ll leave them the trees that make our forests beautiful.  I have discovered, that with a little effort, we can find plenty of wood that can be “resurrected” an other sources that can be purchased from sources that replant and manage their forests as stewards of the land and forests, not pillagers.

Why salvaged or recycled wood for doors?  Many of my doors are Old Growth Redwood that was logged on the Mendocino Coast over 100 years ago.  We all know what a durable wood Redwood is, so it’s no wonder that logs that we left on the forest floor are still viable and make wonderful lumber.  Many times the trees were fallen down a gulch that was too steep for oxen to retrieve the logs.  Other pieces of logs were left on the forest floor because they were just to big to get onto a wagon and they would not split (easily) into smaller pieces.

This is the end of one of my door boards.
you can clearly see that this tree was
fallen by an ax over a 90 years ago

These logs have been laying on the forest floor
for many decades, and still have beautiful lumber.

All of my “figured” (fancy) Douglas Fir came from one log that a friend found in a “cull” (reject) log deck left out in the woods to decay or cut up for firewood by the local.  It had rot running throughout the log, which is why it was put on the cull deck, however there was still hundreds of board feet of beautiful salvageable Douglas Fir.

Here is a 5 foot diameter Douglas Fir log that we salvaged
from the forest in Humboldt County

I do buy Mahogany and White Oak from a hardwoods dealer about 3 hours from my home in the Redwood Forest.  All of the Mahogany that I use is sustainably harvested by Green Lumber Companies and the White Oak is harvested and replanted in the same ecological minded manner.  But the most important fact is that I travel down to “the big city” when a lumber container comes in and I hand pick and choose every stick of lumber that I have used in everyone of my doors.  There is just no other way.

Is it straight enough?  Is it vertical grain?
Are there any knots?

we scrape the paint off the board ends to find
the vertical grain sawn lumber .... very few

............ and I only choose the best quality wood I  can find .......... and if it isn’t of the quality that I demand and my clients deserve ............ I’ll just walk away and hope for a better day.

One more note you should know, I only use vertical grain sawn lumber in my doors.  It is the most stable and least likely to warp, now or in the next 100 years.  Make sure your doors are not made with random sawn or engineered wood with a veneer fascia. 

 Quality still matters.

.