Door Repair

The Fordham Apartments Building on Southwest Vista Avenue just off West Burnside (Black & White Photo Circa 1950’s)…

…was finished in 1911, and assuming that the door is original, as it appeared to be…

…that would make it a 3’6″ X 7′ 3 3/4″ X 2 1/4″ 100+ Year Old Mahogany Door.

And she has been showing her mileage for some time now. If you click on these photos and enlarge them, you will better see the miles of which we speak.

As one might expect of a 100 year old oversized stile & rail door, the mortise & tendon joints were opening up causing the strike-side of the door to sag off of the hinge stile of the door. The brass kick-plate installed at the top, as shown in one of the above photos…

…as well as the wood plate across the top on the interior side were obviously an attempt to minimize the further effects of gravity. As you can see if you enlarge the photos, we were looking at a 3/4″ gap between the top of the door and the header-jamb near the strike edge. The Oak Threshold was apparently removed at some point to keep the door from hitting it and not locking. Security is always important in these buildings.

And so it was that we were contracted to rehabilitate this senior citizen of the door world. The top of the door was cut so that the gap was a consistent 3/4″ all the way across, and then the hinge-mortises on the hinge-jamb were modified to raise the door approx. 5/8″ to achieve a consistent 1/8″ reveal all the way across the top.

All the seams between the stiles and the rails were glued, clamped and then reinforced with lag-bolts (See box on the ground below the door) & then the holes plugged with doweling. The damaged exterior portion of the strike-stile below the lock was machined to allow the lamination of a new piece of Mahogany material.

The glass was replaced, the exterior raised-molding around the wood-panel and the glass was all replaced with new material. The wrap-plate around the lock was replaced with a new one. The plates across the top of the door (interior & exterior) were removed, and a new Oak Threshold was fabricated on-site to finish off the opening.

The jamb was weatherstripped with silicone compression weatherstripping along the top & sides, and pile weatherstripping was routed into the bottom of the door. An oil-rubbed-bronze kick-plate & a kick-down door hold-open was installed and the “piece de resistance” were Dan Rice’s stain matching and wood restoration services. See http://woodwindowstaining.com/.