August 30, 2008

Doors and Shades

Our arrangement with our GC calls for us to obtain and supply all ‘finish’ items, to be installed by the GC. Appliances, tile, lighting fixtures, outlets, cabinets, countertops, moldings, faucets, are all to be purchased by us.

The wife and I really didn’t have much trouble picking things out until we got to the interior doors. Then we ran into difficulty. Of course the architect has just specc’d out standard white hollow core doors, but we had better things in mind. Complicating this was the fact that we had forgotten to budget the doors altogether, so whatever we spent was over and above. And, we needed a lot of doors. Seven interior plus two sets of bi-folds.

Doors offer so many choices. Solid softwood like pine? (Not for us). Solid core with a hardwood veneer? (Our ultimate selection). Solid hardwood? Then the panel style. Arts and crafts? Plain? Paneled? And, most hardwood doors are sold unfinished, so we would have to do the finishing (not a problem).

Our furniture is all Arts and Crafts. And most of the furniture we have in the bedrooms (where the doors would end up) is cherry. At first, we decided to go with a Mission-style door in cherry. But remembering that we did a few too many Arts and Crafts touches in our old apartment, which were all ripped out by the buyer, we decided to stick to the plan for this house, which is to keep it as simple, classic, and as desirable to as many potential buyers as possible, rather than turn it into a Mission museum (pretty hard to do anyway to a South Slope brick house).

We went to look at doors in a few places in Brooklyn. We saw some beautiful doors in the $500-$700 range, which was more than we wanted to pay. We looked on the internet, but in my opinion you need to touch and heft some things and doors are one of those things. We ended up back at Home Depot, where we looked at a custom line of solid-core doors by Jeld-Wen. And it happened that HD was having a 20% off sale on custom doors. And so we placed an order for six-panel cherry veneer doors, plus bi-folds. We paid an extra $10 per door to upgrade the hinges to satin chrome. The doors averaged out to about $350 each, including tax and delivery.

Here’s a photo of the doors after delivery:
http://www.pbase.com/dentontay/image/102376120

Here’s a regular door, installed but unfinished (after the first one, we discovered it was easier to finish the door after the installation, not before.
http://www.pbase.com/dentontay/image/102376121

Here’s a door after finishing (same as embedded image):
http://www.pbase.com/dentontay/image/102376124

Here is a set of bi-folds, before:
http://www.pbase.com/dentontay/image/102376122

and after:
http://www.pbase.com/dentontay/image/102376125
Before we got to the point where we could buy good furniture, we made do by obtaining old furniture either from thrift shops or from dumpsters and refinishing it ourselves. So I’ve learned a bit about finishing over the years, and the product that I keep coming back to is Formby’s Tung Oil Finish. It’s a rubbed-on penetrating oil finish, and it’s just about idiot-proof. It’s not a production finish, as it takes up to ten or more coats to achieve its magic (several more than claimed by the mfgr), but all you have to do for each of these coats is to pour it on a cloth and rub it in. At the end, simply sand down with 500 or 600 grit sandpaper and give one last coat. I’ve found that it works better on real hardwood as opposed to a veneered product like these doors, where it can end up slightly ‘patchy’, but that can be remedied (as it was here) by a final application of butchers’ wax, which is then buffed in by hand.

A note on Home Depot’s special order practices: They have deny and obscure down to a science. We were quoted three week delivery, which turned out to be six weeks. They give you, in writing, what is alleged to be a firm delivery date. A week before you call to check, and they assure you it will be in on time (even though the website keeps showing ‘not shipped’). On the promised delivery date, they will assure you it will be coming in on ‘tonight’s truck’. The next day when you call, they express amazement that they didn’t arrive, and say they have to give it to the ‘expediter’, who of course never calls back. I actually got Jeld-Wen to help me and also made two personal trips to HD to complain.

A short note on the blinds: We wanted to keep the sense of light that drew us to the house in the first place, while obtaining the needed privacy. So we went with a plain, white, single-cell honeycomb shade, that at least in these rooms goes both top-down and bottom-up. Bought from blinds.com based on past favorable experiences.
http://www.blinds.com/control/product/productID,8521

Here’s a set installed. Pretty simple DIY installation that we wouldn't bother the GC to do.
http://www.pbase.com/dentontay/image/102376123

That’s it for now! Should have a master bathroom entry soon.

Posted by denton at 11:59 AM | Comments (0)

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