The score of the century
It's been awhile since I've talked about my alleged studio building project. That's because I got depressed by the exceedingly hot weather, and then by the prices of the materials I was going to have to buy if I was going to build it the way I wanted it, and then by all the other busywork I've been occupied with all summer (apron-making and so on – no, I haven't forgotten – they will be in the mail when you least expect it).
So I had more or less decided not to build it this year, and maybe not at all. Then, I saw an ad in the paper. "Barn sale," it said, and followed that announcement with a long list of items including French doors.
Hmm, I thought. I was envisioning what you usually see at this type of sale: somebody's crappy old rotted out cracked and peeling doors that they finally broke out of their frames and replaced so they could stop having condensation and mold growing in their breakfast room all winter. But, I thought, they might also be kind of cool. You never know. I might as well go look at them.
Or not. By Saturday morning I had forgotten about the sale. When Mr. A woke me up saying, "Hey, did you see this – there's this sale I thought we might go to," and pointing to that same spot in the classified section, I felt a little tiny zing of electricity. It seemed promising that we'd both picked out the same ad. So we went.
Yowza. The sale turned out to be in an enormous barn just a half mile or so from our house, at a compound where a couple of my friends have studio space. I hadn't recognized the address in the paper and when I realized that's where we were, I got even more excited.
Everything deflated momentarily when I saw the doors. There were not just one or two of them, and they were not crappy or old or rotten. There were more than 20 of them and they were (are) incredible. Eight-foot, twelve-light, double-glazed solid wood exterior grade doors with beautiful polished brass hardware and those little honeycomb insulated blinds, in perfect condition and only a few years old, according to my friend who was having the sale. Her husband had salvaged them from a $3 million remodel for some people who decided, after looking through them for awhile, that they wanted their Great Room's Spectacular Panoramic Wine Country Views framed by single-pane doors after all, not multi-pane.
I was momentarily flummoxed by how different they were from what I'd been anticipating, and it took my brain a moment to start percolating again. I can't use these, I kept thinking. They're too big. Too nice. Too expensive.
It turned out, I was wrong on all three counts. They are not too big if I think of them as wall panels, since the walls are already planned to be exactly eight feet tall at their shortest point. And they are very nice, but just because I was envisioning myself cobbling something together out of semi-substandard materials doesn't mean I have to do it that way. As for the price, I got eight of them for just over $15 each, plus one smaller one thrown in for free, that I will use to make a cold frame out of this winter. They look like this, only taller.
So now they're all stored away on a pallet against our back fence, awaiting my redesign and the purchase of the rest of the lumber and other stuff I'm going to need to get this thing built at last. I'm excited.
P.S. I know the difference between "they" and "them." I was just being colloquial (Merriam-Webster: "unacceptably informal.") Thanks for the concern, though.
So I had more or less decided not to build it this year, and maybe not at all. Then, I saw an ad in the paper. "Barn sale," it said, and followed that announcement with a long list of items including French doors.
Hmm, I thought. I was envisioning what you usually see at this type of sale: somebody's crappy old rotted out cracked and peeling doors that they finally broke out of their frames and replaced so they could stop having condensation and mold growing in their breakfast room all winter. But, I thought, they might also be kind of cool. You never know. I might as well go look at them.
Or not. By Saturday morning I had forgotten about the sale. When Mr. A woke me up saying, "Hey, did you see this – there's this sale I thought we might go to," and pointing to that same spot in the classified section, I felt a little tiny zing of electricity. It seemed promising that we'd both picked out the same ad. So we went.
Yowza. The sale turned out to be in an enormous barn just a half mile or so from our house, at a compound where a couple of my friends have studio space. I hadn't recognized the address in the paper and when I realized that's where we were, I got even more excited.
Everything deflated momentarily when I saw the doors. There were not just one or two of them, and they were not crappy or old or rotten. There were more than 20 of them and they were (are) incredible. Eight-foot, twelve-light, double-glazed solid wood exterior grade doors with beautiful polished brass hardware and those little honeycomb insulated blinds, in perfect condition and only a few years old, according to my friend who was having the sale. Her husband had salvaged them from a $3 million remodel for some people who decided, after looking through them for awhile, that they wanted their Great Room's Spectacular Panoramic Wine Country Views framed by single-pane doors after all, not multi-pane.
I was momentarily flummoxed by how different they were from what I'd been anticipating, and it took my brain a moment to start percolating again. I can't use these, I kept thinking. They're too big. Too nice. Too expensive.
It turned out, I was wrong on all three counts. They are not too big if I think of them as wall panels, since the walls are already planned to be exactly eight feet tall at their shortest point. And they are very nice, but just because I was envisioning myself cobbling something together out of semi-substandard materials doesn't mean I have to do it that way. As for the price, I got eight of them for just over $15 each, plus one smaller one thrown in for free, that I will use to make a cold frame out of this winter. They look like this, only taller.
So now they're all stored away on a pallet against our back fence, awaiting my redesign and the purchase of the rest of the lumber and other stuff I'm going to need to get this thing built at last. I'm excited.
P.S. I know the difference between "they" and "them." I was just being colloquial (Merriam-Webster: "unacceptably informal.") Thanks for the concern, though.
3 Comments:
Wow! Those are a great find! Kimm and I bought two of those several years ago for $10 each. Not as big as those.
We've put one in from the office to the back yard. The other is still waiting to go in from the bedroom to the backyard. Just recently we wanted to put another one in from the living room to the hallway and Kimm had to pay $40 for just the one door at the salvage yard. And it needs MAJOR refinishing! Doors are not cheap. That is a great price for what you got. How Exciting!!!
Sounds excellent!! What a great find. So I'm thinking you should do two sets of doors on the front, a set of doors on each side, and a solid back (with transom windows along the top of the solid wall). I'm seeing a southern style studio with a wide porch on the front and an overhanging roof. What are your design thoughts?
Oh, excellent!!
My living room window is a 3 x 8 15-light door, turned sidewise, with the door knob hole filled in. It's fixed in place. My studio window is a twelv-light on hinges (also sidewise), with a chain so it can be lifted for cross ventilation in summer.
You are *going* to love doing this!
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