New Doors

When we first bought our house, Nik referred to it as "the bowling alley". The view from the front door shot straight down the living room, past the dining room, through the door to the kitchen, and straight on out the back door. Plus the newly-refinished floors have a certain bowling-alley-esque feel to them.

The living room and dining room were also separated by a strange quasi-arch on the ceiling. The feng shui was not great.

Before: The bowling alley.

We decided early on – acting on advice from our architect friend Wade Skeels – to reconfigure the bowling alley, by turning the arch into a true archway, and expanding and moving the kitchen's two doorways away from the center wall, to break up the flow through the house. We also decided to add pocket doors between the kitchen and dining room. Since we're all going to be working from home for the foreseeable future, providing some separation between the rooms in such a small house seemed like a good idea. Pocket doors will allow us to open up the flow between the kitchen and dining room when we want to.

Nik builds a new arch.

Nik adds scored wallboard to the new archway.

For the back door, I ordered a 36" wide glass door to replace the narrower metal door. (It took three weeks to get to us - supposedly because of the trade war with China. Plus Covid.) Once the new door finally arrived, Nik spent a weekend ripping off the back of the kitchen wall and installing the new door. The southwest light into the kitchen is so nice - it was immediately obvious that this was an excellent decision!

New wider glass back door, in the middle of the wall. So much better!!

Then we had to have a big ol' discussion about what *kind* of doors we were going to use in the rest of the house. Nik hated the plain doors in the house, and whatever we got to replace them would also need to match the new pocket doors.

Honestly, I'd never really thought that much about doors. Like, maybe not ever. But Nik had thought about doors, a lot. So he took me to Urban Ore, our local amazing salvage place, to show me the used doors he was thinking of. "Sure, those look fine," I said.

"OK," says Nik. "So you're good with these?"

Suddenly it occurred to me to ask what other options I might have. So Nik pointed out some doors with a (slightly) different design – and, naturally, I decided I liked those better. Nik liked his better.

Since we couldn't agree, we decided to get both, bring them all home, and then decide which ones to bring back. Slightly absurd? For sure. But hey – we're still married.

Urban Ore - used doors galore. Eight of them coming home with us.

Can you tell the difference?

In the end we decided to go with the doors I liked better - the bottom panel is slightly taller, the side rails slightly wider. These doors are older, and technically not the right style for our 1947 bungalow - probably dating from the 1920s or 1930s instead. But (I think) they're just a more pleasing proportion, and it turned out they match the proportions of our new glass back door.

Then, Nik had to figure out how to move and expand the inside doorway. And then he had to figure out how to install pocket doors. YouTube to the rescue!

Step 1: go down to the studs, with temporary supports in place (just in case). Old doorway still intact.

I tend to mostly trust Nik to know what he's doing. But when he mentioned that he was "pretty sure" it wasn't a load bearing wall he was ripping out, it did occur to me that maybe it's not the safest idea to tear down a central wall in your one-and-only house.

Step 2: Entire wall removed, with new header in place.

Nik put in extra supports - just to be on the safe side and not have the roof cave in - and then he replaced them with a full header running the length of the opening. At which point, we all breathed a little easier.

New pocket doorway framing.

From the other direction - easier to see the pocket door hardware.

Then Nik went back again to Urban Ore, where he found these two almost-identical two-foot doors:

He realized after he got them home that they were two inches too short (because he'd mounted the pocket door hardware too high). But they were all he could find, and the door hardware wasn't coming out, so he came up with an ingenious solution to expand the doors to fit the space.

Doors too short? No problem!

Voila! the perfect height.

Nik's final words? "They're not kidding when they say, make sure all your framing is plumb."

Doors now filled, sanded, and primed. Left-hand jamb had to be shimmed to make the doors line up straight.

And then... we had to figure out the trim. But that's for another blog post.