Friday, June 28, 2019

Winter '18- Spring'19 - Doors and entertainment center

I had a set of double doors to do for the entry into the Master Suite and they were quite complex.  It was way more than 2x the work of a single door to get everything to match up, plus the hardware for this door was very complex.  It uses a multi-point latching setup like a set of French Doors to allow both panels to be easily usable as the individual doors are only slightly over 2' wide each, so there is a frequent need to open both doors when carrying things, for example.  The multi point latch has strikes in the header jamb above the door and inset into the wood floor below the door so the "free" panel can be latched to the frame and floor and the "active" panel can latch to the free panel.

This pair of doors took me close to 3 months, nights and weekends, of course.  One single door can be done in 2-4 weeks depending on other things going on, for comparison.

Here are the doors in process being dry fitted ion the shop before final finish (the panels are pre-finished before glue-up)

And the initial installation:



And 2 shots of the final installation with trim in place:


I mentioned the hardware.  Here are a couple shots of prepping that and getting it in place in the door frame.  Expensive too - the hardware alone for this one door was over $700, but that is what is takes for a special situation like this.





I wanted to get a few doors done this winter, but the double doors took so long I only got one more done - the Master bath main door:






After that, there were several smaller things including some shop projects and then i did the entertainment center.  Now you have to realize we had not invested anything in a a new TV since, ooohhhh... 1997...so here is the 32" TUBE TV in all it's glory....

Before I started.  you can see the drawers are underway back under the stone bench, but I had not done too much yet.


...And in it's final resting place at the recycle center.  Yes, we were that far behind on TV technology, but it wasn't used a lot, so didn't phase us much...


And the new setup.  The 65" flat screen is on a swivel mount so it can swing out and be tilted any which way.  We have it tilted down slightly as it is mounted a bit higher than seated eye level.  I built a shelf above the stone bench to help define the space a bit and some drawers below for storage of discs and such.  The subwoofer is under there too, on the right.  Our former neighbor Ron is an A/V guy who does a lot of high end houses, and he set us up with all this.  Nice to have someone who knows this stuff helping out.  Click on image for a larger view, as always.



And that was it for the winter and spring.  The double doors really killed me for time.  After the entertainment center, I started on wrapping up the screen porches from last fall.  That is well underway as of this date (6/28/19) and I am starting to look for contractors to make the screens now.  After that is another huge project that is getting going - the finished stairs!