a pair of antique doors

another interesting and challenging project here involving some antique doors.  the clients purchased them in austin, texas for the home they were/are building in londonderry,vermont.  we've done a number of other projects there, and we're currently working on a reclaimed chestnut king size bed for them that should be completed and ready for finishing this week.

by the time i got involved with the doors, the hole for them was already framed up, and was both narrower 

and taller (standard r.o.height, 82.5") than the doors, which were about 73" x 39" wide as a pair.

we brought them into the shop and did some conceptualizing.  first off, the large strap hinges were trapped between the two layers that made up the doors rather than applied to the face of the door, which is their typical location.

typically, with big strap hinges like these, you block the door in place, apply the hinges, remove the blocking and you're good to go.  having the hinges behind the frame and panel parts of the doors, changed the location of the hinges's pivot point, which meant we had to create a space for the frame and panel part of the door to open into.

and then there was the hinge pintles themselves, which had to be screwed into the frames before the frame was mounted to the wall, or the wall would be in the way ... 'houston, we have a problem' came to mind several times in the engineering of this project. 

anyway, we figured it out, more or less.  in the end we had to add a 3/8ths shim behind the frame, both to keep the irregular backs of the doors from binding against the wall itself and to cover the space where the doors set away from the frames when they were closed.  still with me?  good!

 

here they are in the 'test hang position

 

and in this photo, you can see the white wall behind where we had to add the shims

then, back at the shop we had to add 8" or so to the bottom of both doors; antique and color the frame; add the steel parts sam fabricated to hold the lock and then take them back over and install them permanently

another fun and challenging one

see trevor adding the extensions on the bottoms of the doors below ... we maybe should have added a couple pieces of steel to the extensions, but we were, as they say, 'a bit over budget', and
it was time to hang em.

check those rough planks ...

really rough planks

 

very, very cool old objects, and i can't even guess their age.  they are real.  and they are old.  i'm thinking maybe the planks were the doors first and the frames and panels were added later as 'decorations' .