Flowers by Tommy Luke Flower shop in S.W. downtown Portland on 12th street.

The store is beginning to unintentionally show the age of the building. Time for an entryway facelift. The original ill-fitting wood door is of course, the center of it all. One of those all-important first impressions you get.

Rubbing on the exterior soffit, and rubbing on the strike-jamb as evidenced by the marks on the door edge.

These antiquated hydraulic door closers are quite the novelty, displaying plenty of character, but lack some of the refined adjustments…

…of the modern hydraulic door closer, such as this LCN Model 4041.

This variation of the Adams-Rite model 1890 Latch/Lock was reinstalled into the new door.

If you enlarge this photo by clicking on it, you will see that we were also initially asked to reinstall the original flat-bar push-pull hardware that runs across the door.

But then we were later asked to return & install a slightly more elegant round push-pull bar ensemble.

Behold, the finished product which we custom-fit, machined and installed into the original jamb assembly, retaining all the original interior and exterior trim components.

The face lift. Compare this photo to the second photo (above).

Northwest Burnside, near the bridge. A narrow double-entry set of wood doors. You had to open both doors if you needed to get something in or out that was wider than just one of the doors. That, and the fact that these original doors had many miles on them, were beat up and didn’t fit well translated into a plan being devised to replace both doors with just one wider door, and then filling in the balance of the opening with a very narrow fixed sidelight (see next photo).

As we often do, we were able to install the new door panels into the original jamb assembly. If you enlarge the photo, you may be able to make out the barrel-hinges on the left of the door. Also known as “Spring Hinges,” they allowed the door to swing both in and out. These are also known as “Double-Acting” hinges. If you’d like to learn more about barrel-hinges, you might copy the following address and paste it into your browser & then click on “Images for double acting barrel hinges:” https://www.google.com/search?q=double+acting+barrel+hinges&tbm
=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=rl
_YUZTSIsiViALI4YDQCQ&ved=0CEYQsAQ&biw
=853&bih=571

The Waldo Building, built in 1886 on Southwest 2nd Avenue & Washington Street is named after Judge John B. Waldo, who served on the Oregon Supreme Court.

A law office on the 3rd floor is looking to partition off an open room being used as storage space at the time of this photo. The mandate given to us was to make it look as though the new doors had always been there.

More specifically, the opening was to match the door & transom assembly in the adjoining wall.
The original wood-surround and trim materials were reused and the new doors & transom sash were sized & manufactured to fit the existing opening.

As you may be able to make out (if you click on the photo), the above photo shows Jon Benson installing what is commonly called applied-stop-material over the original surround materials to create a double-rabbeted jambs.

Jon Benson & Jared Anderson go about the business of expert door hanging.

Hinge mortises were created (routed) into the original opening materials and the doors were hung and made to look as though they had always been there.

A replica horizontal mull-post was fabricated to match the horizontal mull-post on the nearby single-entry door opening.

Elemental dear Watson. Remember, you can click on any photo to enlarge it, and perhaps gain a better idea of what is being shown.

The skillset needed to trim the new doors and transom sash to accommodate these very old openings that are often less than perfectly square, is just one example of how we earn our keep,

Which is, as you may understand, just another example of why we enjoy the reputation we have.

The new Head Start Building being built in 2004 on North Kirby Avenue.

Candid shot of technician Eric Lewis finishing the mortising of a door for the hinges.

Some would wonder why the doors were not ordered prehung in the jambs.

There are a number of scenarios that can lead to the need for doors to be prepped on-site, such as a…

…situation where the buildings production schedule necessitated the jambs being installed with dunnage…

…doors (temporary doors) before the new doors were perhaps available for one reason or another.

Jon Benson giving Jim Hoffmeister some tips on the finer points of routing a door for the hinges.

The crew heading home after another satisfying day of expert door and commercial hardware installation.

The Sovereign Apartments on Southwest Madison in downtown Portland, where we installed new Oak doors into the original jamb assembly.

New Von Duprin Mortise-Case Panic Device set-up with an electric-strike on the inactive door and tied in with the security access system. We are experts in running wire through wood doors for these and many other types of electronic door hardware.

Faith Journey Church in Tigard. Time for a facelift and upgrade for the front entry door, sidelight & transom assembly.

New doors, hardware & upgrading from single-pane glass to insulated glass, including putting glass back into the transom above the doors. And all of this is to be done re-using the original…

…jamb-assembly, because we possess the expertise to do so. They took our recommendation to eliminate the vertical-rod panic hardware which tends to be so temperamental and problematic over the years. Just ask the guys who do the maintenance on these buildings.

This is done of course by means of employing the use of what is called a steel removable-center mullion upon which the non-vertical-rod panics will latch. If at some point there is the need to move a piano through the opening, the post is easily and quickly removed and reinstalled.

Phil McNair goes about cleaning the sidelight jambs in preparation for installing the new insulated (double-pane) glass units.

Brandon is preparing the installation of the removable center steel mull-post.

Steve Hilt is fine-tuning the sizing on the new wood doors.

You’ll note that the plywood and the light fixtures over the top of the doors has been replaced with new insulated glass.

New non-vertical-rod panic devices, new hydraulic door-closers, kick-plates, the mull-post. Choosing to paint the jamb assembly white was a good call. The contrasts between the brushed-chrome, the black & the white look snappy, don’t you think?

A bit more subdued on the exterior, but I guess the board of directors decided to stay with the original color scheme on the building’s exterior. Personally, we sort of liked the lite-kits in the original doors…they seemed a little more creative and inviting, a bit less institutional perhaps…but of course we weren’t calling the shots or paying the bills.

As you can see, this project took place at the Rock Creek Country Club located between Sunset Hwy. and N.W. West Union Road.

Time to acquire some privacy between the kitchen and the dining area. The stereotypical double-acting butler style doors are to be installed into an existing finished opening. These folks had their act together. Having consulted with some sort of professional, they simply handed us paperwork already containing…

…architectural-grade illustrations with all the dimensional and physical specifications that represented what they needed, and said; “this is what we want.” Note the double-acting spring-hinges. These doors swung both in and out of the kitchen to facilitate service professionals with their hands full.

This is what the restaurant looks like in 2013, when we finally made it back to take some after-shots for our website that we are updating. This eating/drinking establishment is now called the White Owl Social Club.

This is what the back side of the building looked like in 2005 when we first arrived to inspect the exterior wall that they wanted opened up to create a folding wall AKA a folding door assembly.

Most all of us know how popular these open-air openings have become for restaurants. Allowing patrons to sit out to what was to become an expanded exterior patio area.

Note the new support beam installed above. Jon Benson and Jared Anderson are shown here well on their way to installing the door assembly. You may click on the photo to enlarge it, if so interested.

A little plumb-bob action to insure that the threshold assembly properly lines up with the above track assembly.

This is what the door assembly and the patio area looked like when we visited in 2013.

We were told by some of the current personnel working in the restaurant that the previous food establishment had a fairly rough and tumble venue.

This information was offered as explanation for some of the wear and tear on the door assembly.

Although it was still working and fitting just fine eight years hence.

In this photo you can better see the free standing patio structure they built out over the expanded exterior patio eating area.

A commercial remodel of a hotel kitchen on what is now known as Martin Luther Blvd. in Northeast Portland.

We were contracted to provide & install a set of what are known as double-egress doors. Hollow-Metal Steel Jamb Assembly with Wood Doors.

Obviously, this makes a lot of sense for a high traffic opening for folks carrying large trays full of plates and food, don’t you think? Fewer traffic jams and collisions.

One of the many previously upscale homes in the Pearl District turned to commercial offices. And time to spruce up the curb appeal for prospective clients, or maybe to simply achieve that air of success perceived to be so very important in achieving success.

Remember, you can click on the photos to enlarge them. We had these doors fabricated by a local shop that is no longer in business, but they were made to the specifications we provided. All finish sizing and hardware machining was achieved on-site by our mechanics.