Doors

One of the things that reflects quality and substance are doors, whether on a device, a car or a building. It is a part you touch, the thing you personally interact with. I remember shopping for my first boom-box when I had my own room in college. It was really important to me that the cassette tape compartment was solid and well designed- a soundless slow glide, not a plastic-y clack slap. I wouldn’t have know how to explain why at the time, but it makes sense to me, looking back.

Still have it- don’t need the cassette player any more but the radio blasts the same tunes I used to listen to when I got it, but that’s now an ‘Oldies’ station, of course.

When we built the apartment, we spent time looking for and found interesting doors to reuse. It was unappealing to buy flimsy pre-hung doors and put them along side the steel fire doors in this building. High quality new doors are amazing but out of our budget. We also think something shiny new wouldn’t blend with the surroundings. We like patina. It tells a story.

The steel fire doors were painted to look like wood and are appropriately looking their age.

We have some special doors in the BAB

We’ve been gathering doors for a while and we have almost all we need for the next phase. We need quite a few doors for upstairs and the volume of the space is larger than the apartment. We needed to find doors that fit the scale, as well as the substance of the space. We’ve been shopping at our usual places, and a newer place. We’ve also been ‘shopping’ in the building, hoping to relocate doors that are already here.

We posted about these doors, that came out of a school. We’ve measured and tagged each door.

Some are in better shape than others, though I don’t like the vandalism, I can appreciate the message.

We got two like this from a friend- Thanks Laurel!

These came from ReFab. We like the highly organized store and their give-back mission but their items can cost more than we typically want to spend. They had a 50% off sale on doors!

These two are in the basement and must have been in an earlier configuration of the building.

Operators Quarters, not sure where this would have been.

The bottom is in rough shape, though. It must have been somewhere wet.

It still has a old butt stuck to it

This one is outside the Generator Room/fall out shelter supply storage. It has an interesting grille window. Surprising to see an opening in a fire door. It looks like it was meant to be a sliding door.

This is the door to the Generator Room. The hardware and the strapping make it look as substantial as it is.

The Cable Vault door has a counter weight closer on a chain in the structure to the right of the door and half-pin barrel hinges

Made by St. Louis Fire Door Company. It has an UL listing but there is too much paint on it to read the number.

The hand scribbled schedule has been entered into the digital construction documents.

Same for the sketched locations of the doors. We’ve adjusted the plans to accommodate the size and swing of each door.

We have hardware- hinges and handles- for most of what we plan to use but are short a few hinges. We need a couple more doors for closets, too. Regan’s Junque’ store and ReFab have many options to chose from. But if find something interesting out there, we’ll figure out a way to incorporate it, or swap out a door we have that needs work.