Lovin' a Door

On Christmas Day, we sat down to make our charitable donations for the year. In sorting through the myriad request letters, we discovered that the Houston chapter of Habitat for Humanity celebrated 25 years this year and had created a special project in honor of their anniversary - 25 reclaimed doors were decorated by local and national artists and local student artists. One of the pictured doors in the flyer was created by the middle school to which we are zoned, Johnston (yes, with a 't') Middle School. 

The doors had spent the fall on display in a museum or two and then were displayed at Habitat's fall gala. Some had been successfully auctioned off or otherwise found new homes, but there were still some doors available for "adoption" (for a donation above a given amount). We looked at the check we had already written and went "hmm. We qualify for a door - wonder if the Johnston door is still available?"

So we e-mailed the project's contact name, Bronwyn, on Christmas Day, and very surprisingly, received a response that evening. She was pretty sure the JMS door was still available!

Fast forward to today, after several phone calls and e-mails back and forth with Bronwyn, we were set to visit the Habitat office and look at the available doors. We took the 2nd row of seats out of the minivan, tossed in some cardboard and other stuff to protect the seat rails, and off we went.

The doors were very neat - we forgot to take a camera, so we don't have any pictures of the other doors. There was an ordinary-sized door that had been painted by The Kincaid School which was stunning - a 6-panel, burgundy ground, with groupings of pears in each of the panels, all done in 3-D acrylics. It had been adopted, just not picked up. It was very lovely.

The JMS door, I have neglected to mention, is HUGE. It is a 96-inch tall door. Yep, 8-foot tall! While we have no place for it in our current 8-ft tall ceilinged home, we can certainly make room for it in the new house's expansion, perhaps in the pool room, or perhaps in the garage/workroom. We loved it just as much in person as we had on paper - in the flyer, we had seen the side with the sun. As a surprise bonus, the other side of the door is painted entirely differently, so we effectively have 2 different doors.

We believe this to be an interior door (based on thickness), but it was never used, apparently, as there are no mortises for the hinges or core drilled for a handle-set. Right now, it is mounted on stand braces (for display), so that is how we have stored it in the new house's garage (which has no ceiling, so the door can stand upright on some bricks until we are ready for it).

Rugen Cat is checking out the door in the pictures.

Happy New Year, everyone!