We went back to Historic Albany Foundation (a not-for-profit historic preservation society that sells donated salvage materials to support their preservation activities) to grab the doors we'd spotted last week. Fortunately they were still there - we hadn't put a hold on them or anything because we just weren't sure they would work. With some modifications to the door plans, we figured out that they wouldn't just work, they'd be awesome!
We bought two doors that were from the Albany courthouse. 7 1/2 feet tall by 40 inches wide and 1 3/4 inches thick. Solid oak, stained dark, and wonderful.
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| Big. Heavy. Oak. |
The doors match and will sit across from each other - one into my pantry, one into the bathroom. We'd planned to have pocket doors in those positions, but these doors are too big for the frames. Rather than cut down the doors (heaven forbid), we're going to do sliding barn doors instead.
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| Backside of door (from pantry) |
The pantry door says "Director of Finance" and "Private". If you know my history, you know how cool this is. If you don't know my history - accept that this is cool.
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| Front of door |
The bathroom door just says "Private". We tried to find one that said Maintenance or Janitor but the other doors were all blank (they had eight doors in total). We'll need to do some DIY to cover the damage/holes from the old hardware and install handles and bumpers. I'm thinking something in leather. Chris mentioned heavy gauge rope. We'll come up with something interesting yet functional.
Did I mention the fun stuff has started?!?
we put it in pocket doors in our house in WI - found out the hard way that the hardware is one of those seek and ye shall find ordeals (we made our own doors out of our hardwoods from one of the forested properties we owned) Hopefully yours will be easy to install - did it come with some hardware for the rollers?
ReplyDeleteWe had two options for hardware - Curtis Lumber carries pocket door sets (frame, track, rollers, etc) that are internally mounted in the wall and Tractor Supply carries barn door hardware (track and roller brackets) that is surface mounted. Given the barn look of the house we decided to go with Tractor Supply for most of our doors.
DeleteLOVE the doors! They will look so good as sliding doors. If you want to do leather handles, search for replacement antique truck handles. That's what we used and they still look great. Very thick and durable. They we're very affordable, I'm thinking $12/each and they were handmade specifically for us.
ReplyDeleteYeah for the fun stuff!
Oooh, great idea. I was playing around with the idea of using quirt handles but hadn't gotten past the "hmmm, I wonder if" stage. Need to hit a tack shop and see what might be available.
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