Tag Archives: doors

Very Special Main Door

It should feel special to walk into special places. And a place that takes 24 hours to travel to is a special place indeed. Here’s what greets you when you arrive at the India pied a terre:

Here’s the story about the door: It is about 100 years old and came from a residence near Kanchipuram. Its height is low, in keeping with the tradition to bow your head as you pass through the door. On the top, in the middle, is a carving of Krishna with his cows playing a flute. In this role he is known as “Gopala,” or cow herder. The door was renovated by Muthu Handicrafts on OMR road on the outskirts of Chennai. The doorknocker is solid brass and is weighty — two pounds!

The side of the door facing the interior of our apartment looks very different. It has a country feel that fits with the design and decor that will be coming as we keep working on the place:

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Beautiful Garage Doors

EDITED 7/31/11 to add a pic of our formerly boring Clopay basic garage doors, now with carriage house hardware from Martin:

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We repainted our house this week, and as part of the cosmetic overhaul, we’ll be adding carriage house hardware (from Martin) on our garage doors. While researching carriage house style and hardware, I found that the utilitarian garage door can be beautiful …

Amarr Garage Doors:

From ICD Industrial Door Co.:

Via Scottsdale Art Factory:

From Jeld-Wen Estate Collection:

Via Evergreen Carriage Doors:

Featured at This Old House:

Via Castillo Doors:

From the Real Carriage Door Company (I think I understand exactly what they do!):

They demonstrate that real carriage doors swing out:

Via Artisan Custom Doorworks:

From Country Living, beautify your garage entrance with climbing flowering vines:

From Sousa’s Garage Doors:

And if you’re looking for hardware, I love the tagline at 360 Yardware’s site: “Life’s too short for crummy hardware.” I agree! You have to look at your garage doors every time you leave or come home. Why not have them look interesting? There’s so many ways garage doors can look beautiful, like those above — who knew? Now you do!

And if as for most people, custom cedar doors are not in your budget, consider paint effects to give your garage doors more unique curb appeal.

Barn Door Hardware for Closets

Do you get along with your closet? You know, you want to spend time around it,  you’re getting what you need out of the relationship. It’s working for you. My closet and I have never gotten along well. I’ve tried to fix the relationship. Originally, the storage “system” was just a few simple bars as the closet was once used by a young boy. I thought that was the problem, as the bars didn’t accommodate my wardrobe well. So I replaced them with the Elfa system from The Container Store, similar to this with lots of double rows of bars for hanging tops and pants:

With that, I thought the relationship problems would end. But we’re in troubled waters again. I’m on the verge of breaking up. I rarely visit the closet any more. My clothes are gravitating to a freestanding hanging rack, the ironing board, a chair …

How did it get to this?

My husband’s clothes fill our master bedroom walk-in closet. So I took over another bedroom’s closet. It’s a reach-in closet running along one wall, about 10-feet wide, with four sliding doors. The sliding doors are the problem.

Those doors make blood pressure rise! I swear, you can feel it. They cause many issues — you can only see a 2 1/2-foot slice of the closet at any time, and the rest is very dark. Often the outfits I want to put together are blocked by two different doors. I never was a fan of that game show where you have to guess what’s behind Door #1, 2 and 3, and I’m especially not now!

The doors have got to go. I don’t want the folding door look, it reminds me of the 1970s. So my imagination created another solution:

What about attaching fabric panels to barn door hardware?

What about it? Could it work? Barn door hardware could be attached above the closet. I’d need at least a 10-foot length of it …

A few styles found at Rustica Hardware:

Found at re-nest (see this link for a lot more barn door photos):

A DIY project by House*Tweaking:

Shown at Birch + Bird:

Here’s someone else using barn door hardware for closet doors, shown at re-nest:

From Architectural Digest, barn door hardware holding unique doors in Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne’s home:

The problem with my closet doors is not that they’re sliding, but that they’re solid and sliding. What if they were heavy fabric, edged with wood strips to attach to the barn door hardware? So when the fabric panels slide, they fold and I will be able to see the entire closet. Here’s a mock-up:

I won’t use green wood or fabric with huge writing on it, even though it looks  interesting  here — just chose a few elements quickly to demonstrate the vision. Here’s hopin’ this is the remedy to make the closet a pleasure to use!

Want to see more barn doors? I’m pinning many more interior and exterior doors at my Barn Door Pinterest Board – follow along:

Main Door Installation, continued

The main door is important because every time you enter your home, you activate energy. You want to activate the most beneficial energy. Being raised as a typical American suburban kid, we didn’t think about these things. But I am now somewhat of a believer in house energy, feng shui and vastu shastra.

We once had a condo that violated a feng shui principle, but we didn’t know it at the time. When you walked in the front door, you could see straight through the house and out the large back windows. Apparently this causes money to flow  through the house and out the back window. Which was true in that place the entire time we lived there. Until the day we sold it and our financial picture turned around dramatically and immediately. I will never again live where you walk in the house and the first thing you see is the outdoors across the house. Also, we could see the guy who lived behind us smoking outside all the time and peering into our house. Uh, welcome home? Creepy and negative stuff all around.

Because the main doors to homes should be treated with reverence, there are rituals to do when you install the main door frame. In India, Muhurtha is an aspect of house building. It’s important when you dig a well, lay a foundation, install the main door frame (this ceremony is called Vasakal) and when you first enter into the new house  (Grihapravesam). The main door’s threshold serves to protect the household from perils and diseases, and it paves the way for prosperity.

My husband’s horoscope was checked to determine the best time for the Vasakal ceremony. This bothers me slightly, as I am an Aries and a first-born, and Aries like to be first. At the very least, we don’t like to be left out or forgotton. But I shall survive.

Here are photos from a previous Vasakal ritual on the property: