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These shots were actually taken sometime after we installed the door. I didn?t have a digital camera back then.

I do have some 35mm shots of the job ?in-process? and even VHS Video, but I have yet to find them.

We made the door from a photo our client took of a door he saw in Canada. Note the obscure glass for privacy.

Custom Hinging system that we designed. B&R Machine fabricated them per our specifications.

We employed the use of bearings from McQuire Bearings, and also a company who chromed them for us.

Custom pull-handle which our client designed and had manufacured somewhere.

This was our first residential pivot door like this.

A modest little estate in the wine-growing Yamhill county area.

Another of the many popular Spanish Villa flavored expressions of architecture.

And another wood-door subjected to the moist weather-patterns of the Willamette Valley. This time, it’s a wood-screen door.

If you look close at the top left corner of the door in this photo, you should be able to make out how the door has warped towards the exterior. You can click on the photo to enlarge it if you like.

As you can see, there are actually two of these doors on opposite ends of this open-air sitting room enveloped with screen material.

Once again, we proposed a material that is more impervious to the elements be used in the manufacture of these doors. Our client’s two criteria were that the lock-rail aligns with the sight-lines in the adjoining screen structure…

…and that the two new doors matched the color of the original doors.
Truax Builders Supply (www.truaxnw.com) built the aluminum screen doors to our specifications.

And Portland Powder Coating Inc. (www.portlandpowder.com) matched the sample of wood we brought them from one of the original wood doors.

To facilitate the powder coating process, which involves considerable heat, both doors had to be pretty much completely disassembled. All the neoprene and non-metallic products had to be removed to prevent damage.

Once again we are given opportunity to demonstrate that if something custom can be done, as it relates to doors or windows, we can make it happen.

A client in the Southwest Raleigh Hills area had need for getting a wheelchair through their front double-entry door assembly.

The existing brass interlocking threshold…

…and the subsequent wood sill made for a less than ideal transition to and from the exterior in a wheelchair.

There are a number of potential types of ramps that could be employed here. There are prefabricated aluminum ramps that could be used, or you could poor some concrete over the existing aggregate here.

But the most challenging component of a project like this is lowering the threshold under the doors and then modifying the weather-stripping system on the bottom of the doors to reseal to the newly lowered threshold accordingly.

Having begun in the door business primarily as weather-strippers some 30 odd years ago gives us the expertise we need to address any potential contingency in this regard.

In the photo above, you see two of the three pressure-treated pieces of lumber machined at the necessary graduation that is required to meet ADA specifications.

After fastening the ramp components to the masonry, our technician David Dulgeroff goes about adhering the aluminum to the pressure-treated lumber.

Even the ends of the newly created ramp are laminated with (Pemko 324D) anodized bronze aluminum sill-cover material for a truly complete and professional installation.

Besides the handsome accent that the dark-bronze creates in almost any application, it also wears and weathers so well for years and years.

Northeast Portland. A well-appointed and well-kept home among many in one of Portland’s many enviable neighborhoods.

An understated, yet unique door design that completely fits the original architecture of the house.

Protected from the elements because the architect set the door back beneath an overhang, it’s as sound as it was the day it was installed.

But the current home owners wanted more light in their main entryway. The criteria? Keep the original door.

One of my pat answers when asked if something can be done is to say; “almost anything can be done if you throw enough money at it.”

And while I do not wish to sound cavalier about the expenditure of my client’s resources…

…my intended point, besides a little intended levity, is to affirm the fact that we really do have the hard earned…

…skillset to bring about a very wide spectrum of door and window modifications, customizations and repairs.

We really do understand the nuts and bolts of most things related to doors and windows and how they’re made.

The source of this skillset? Opportunity, a willingness and desire to learn and a belief in the fruit of an old world work ethic.

A conservatory with two sets of double-entry wood entry doors. These originally had Wood Storm Screen Doors over the entry doors, but with no protection from the elements.

After the weather destroyed all the wood-screen doors for the 2nd time, there arose an epiphany regarding the virtues of aluminum doors. But no one would build us the custom aluminum doors needed.

So we bought the best product we knew of…purchasing extra kick-panel material & replacing the glass as needed to achieve the sight-lines needed to match the entry doors over which the storm doors would sit.

We basically disassembled & then re-built them. We customized the strike stile further by inserting wood inside the aluminum profile so we would have the necessary backing materials by which to install the mortise-case locks.

We used Jado mortise-case locks with their uncommonly short backsets. It was the only decent lock that would fit into these narrow aluminum stiles.

Continuous hinges might seem like a bit of overkill, but most all outswing doors are subject to the destructive forces of wind.

Unfortunately, Jado ceased the manufacture of these locks soon after this job was completed.

No expense was spared to ensure that our client had the best storm doors money could buy.

Notice the daylight sight-lines that were maintained to correspond with the entry doors and the adjoining window openings.

And the custom arched detail we devised employing some of the extra kick-plate material.

This was one of the more unusual projects we’ve done.
A solar passive house down at the coast.
In passive solar building design, windows, walls, and floors are made to collect, store, and distribute solar energy…

…in the form of heat in the winter and reject solar heat in the summer. This is called passive solar design or climatic design because, unlike active solar heating systems, it doesn’t involve the use of mechanical and electrical devices.[1] – Wikipedia

But first, back at our warehouse:

Phase one involved installing numerous “cam-locks” in some 23 pocket door panels.

Our client had the doors shipped to our warehouse in Tigard from General Veneer Manufacturing Co. (wwwgeneralveneer.com). This is where some of the sizing issues were fine-tuned & the dozens of cam-locks installed.

The primary purpose of the cam-locks was to allow the creation of massively long pocket door panels (by virtue of locking them together) than would otherwise have been reasonable to manufacture or handle.

On-site; after bringing the doors to the coast with us, we created an impromptu shop in the as yet unfinished living quarters. Not only for installing the doors, but also the finishing of the cedar walls that made up the pockets.

This is 3 or 4 door panels all locked together. The purpose of the unusually wide pocket door panels was to cordon-off each of the two stories into any combination of thirds, width-wise, as the desire and the need presented itself in terms of function and/or solar goals.

No doubt these separations were to facilitate energy efficiency, as well as for privacy and functional purposes. Above, the master bedroom. You can see the walls from which the pocket doors may be drawn on the sides.

The same thing with the kitchen shown here.
An important element of these some 23 pocket door panels we installed is that they are all completely weatherstripped with a pile or brush weatherstrip on all four sides of each opening.

As you can see, the pockets into which the doors are stored were designed (sized) to facilitate having various types of art-work covering the door panels.

A brand new private art studio in the Asian motif of a free-standing tea house.

We prepped the doors on-site for the hinges and locking hardware & cutting the doors to length.

Five doors total for two openings.

The openings were a little out of square, which when associated with openings that are this wide can translate into a lot of extra work.

When working with folding doors such as this, it’s not simply a matter of cutting the doors crooked to match the crooked opening. Graduating threshold pieces had to be fabricated and applied.

Applied jamb stops were created & weatherstripping applied to both the doors & the jambs.

Flush-bolts are employed where the doors fold to help hold the entire bank of doors rigid and secure when closed.

From the interior.

For standard entry or exit.

Or when you want to be one with your garden and the great outdoors.

This project was put into the “Unique & Custom Applications” category because it’s rare for a home-owner to be willing to pay the cost to have a commercial-grade door installed into a residential opening. We are often asked what the strongest type of door is. And the answer to that question is your hollow-metal steel door, which is a commercial-steel door, such as one would find on a theater, or a school or a warehouse. Not to be confused with your stereotypical residential-grade steel door.

These two differing types of steel doors (Residential Vs. Commercial) are as far apart in strength and durability as are a Ultra-Light aircraft as compared to a Lear-jet. When door openings, such as this client’s side-door opening are considered a high-risk for criminal entry, then there is merit to the notion that you may want to make it as much work as possible for the intruder to get through the door.

We say this because we have repaired many doors over the years that “would-be-burglars” damaged, yet failed to get through. The point being that if the task of breaking through the door requires too much noise and draws too much attention from neighbors, then the bad guys are often going to find someplace easier to get through. So this client chose the “creme-d-la-creme” of tough doors for this opening, which is pretty much hidden from view, and thus a prime target.

Add to the installation of this commercial-grade steel door, the fact that it was changed to an out-swing application, and you can rest assured that no one is going to kick this door in. The hinges have non-removable-pins and there is an anti-pry plate on the strike-edge of the door, so prying between the door & jamb won’t be any walk in the park either. The small glass lite-kits are too small to allow reaching through to the locks on the interior side, while large enough to provide light to an otherwise dark basement stairwell.

In 2005 we were referred by a local vendor to Hayward Construction for the installation of a…

…corner configuration set of Nana Folding Doors on this house down in southwest Salem. For information on the NanaWall systems, go to; www.nanawall.com/.

As you may or may not be able to discern from these photos, there is no post in the corner, which means of course…

…that the header-supports are cantilevered over the opening for a rather unique exterior door opening. To get a better view of the dimensional information we were asked to provide for ordering the doors, you might try clicking on the photo to enlarge it. Note that one wall is 5/8″ of an inch thicker than the other, which of course helps keep sharp our finish carpentry skills.

Unfortunately, the homeowners were not home when we returned to take some after shots.

So we were not able to open the doors and get some interior shots, but we’re certain that you get the idea. It opens up the kitchen breakfast-nook area with the patio-barbeque area. Again, to get a better view, enlarge the photo.

One of the unavoidable realities of working on exterior doors and windows, are the long days and nights that are sometimes required. It’s often less than practical to leave a door opening incomplete and to come back later. Fortunately, my 35mm camera had a flash.

And there it is…the photo evidence of Jared Anderson’s young apprenticeship that began several years before this photo was taken. We figure he was about 12 years old in this shot. And thus it was that the young fenestration-Jedi began spending his summers working with his father learning the ancient arts of installing and repairing doors and windows.

Believe it or not, this door and jamb assembly was weatherstripped. I wish the photos and the space here facilitated describing it in detail, but suffice to say that it can be done.
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