The Doors

Rob and I wanted doors at his office that he could shut; if it got too messy and he wanted it "out of sight out of mind" or if he needed privacy or quiet, or just wanted to keep busy grandchildren out if necessary (although that hasn't been a problem yet). 

Even though his office is long enough for the doors to swing in we didn't want them hung that way because they would block access to the video rack.  We didn't want the doors swinging into the family room either because we didn't want to worry about impeding on the pool table area. 

I was hoping we could do pocket doors, but those are more expensive to install and can be troublesome down the road.  We waffled with different ideas for a while and considered going with narrower French Doors so the swing wouldn't be so wide.  While browsing the internet we saw some examples of sliding barn doors and immediately recognized that this was a perfect solution. 

 (Both of these images are from realcarriagedoors.com)

It's a fun way to add character while being practical and useful. 

Check out the gallery of doors at this website

Our builder suggested a company that we could purchase our hardware from, but frankly, it was too boring for us so I hunted down some other options.  Once we had decided on the hardware we were going to use to mount the doors we needed doors.

Rob's brother-in-law, Bryce, is an accomplished woodworker so we asked him if he would consider helping us make some doors.  He was willing but we hadn't even really gotten into working out details when Rob asked if it wasn't possible to purchase existing doors and not worry about the hassle and potential difficulty of building doors from scratch.

I'd been looking at our inspiration images and realized that most of the ones we both liked were not really rustic barn doors but were more clean-lined or vintage style doors.  I'd seen vintage and antique doors listed on KSL Classifieds so I got back on and started looking in earnest.  I found a lot of possibilities but it was tough to find two matching doors that were larger than 24" wide. 

I finally called an antique store in town and asked if they carried doors.  I was delighted to hear that they had quite a few available.  Right out in front of the shop were two matching doors.  We looked them over, checked out all the other doors they had and decided these were our doors. 

The doors came out of a motel from southern Idaho that was being torn down.  Unfortunately, the sales associate couldn't remember the town or the name of the motel and the shop was so busy that she didn't have time to call the seller and ask for the details.  I wish I'd asked her to at least try to find out and get back to us.

 I'm enchanted by the numbers.  We got door number 7 and door number 1 (the 1 is facing the back). 

However, I'm not sure exactly what to do about the numbers.  After the doors are cleaned up I am  going to restain them in a dark espresso as they are quite orange right now.  I'm not sure how much the numbers will be impacted / covered up by the stain, and I was also planning on doing a light sanding before applying the stain so that will affect the numbers too.  I thought about tracing the numbers and then repainting them on, or finding a stencil in a similar style and painting numbers that were more meaninful to us personally.  Or, I could just cover them up.  Or, I could tape off a rectangle around the number and leave the original finish there (but honestly - I think that would not really work).

Wouldn't they look awesome painted in a bold color, like the inspiration picture above?  I'm not sure I could convince Rob to go to that extreme though.

I'd appreciate any suggestions, ideas or experience you have to share, in cleaning the old wood, in staining the new color and especially what to do about those numbers.
 

I suspect the hardware is brass plated and not true brass, but it's still pretty cool looking.  We bought some black ceramic knobs and are going to have the brass knobs on the family room side and the black knobs on the office side (unless I change my mind).  We'll just have to make sure that the door stoppers are mounted at the correct distance from center to stop the doors before the knobs crash into the door frame.