Thursday, April 1, 2010

Salvage

Over the past week I have been thinking a lot about the finish of my house. I can finally start to see the final details. Our basement is full of molding, door casings, beaded paneling and other decorative wood trim from previous renovations of the Firehouse. After a quick trip down there, I had a pile with enough beaded paneling to build the kitchen ceiling / loft floor. A beautiful old door casing appeared that will be perfect for my front door. The trim will wait until another time though. All of the wood has old shellac on it, but when striped off it leaves an incredible, warm, yellow wood. The pattern of the grain shows that it is definitely from another era.
Also this week, a friend of mine who works at the Community Development Corporation took me on a tour of some of the salvage he has saved from renovations of old houses and mills from all over the city. There are lots of possibilities for my cabinetry or whatever else I need to build.  It seems that there is no shortage of amazing salvage in this city!

I think I found my door also- well sort of. I still need to make it, but I found an example of one that I really like. This one is made by Historic Doors
 in Kempton, PA. I really like the proportions of this door, much skinnier than most. There are two things I might change about it though. First, I want to make it into a dutch door. I really like being able to open just half of the door like a window. I also might make the glass section with more, smaller windows.
The next dilemma I have encountered involves the wood stove. I have a great stove that I found last year, and have actually been using all winter in my bedroom. It is a Coalbrookdale Much Wenlock- a small but substantial cast-iron stove, weighing in at just over 300 pounds. Even though it is small (19" by 20" by 27" tall), it may not be small enough. It has the capacity to output more heat that I will probably need as well. I still hope to be able to use this stove because I have it and I love its style, but there are other options if it turns out to be too big. One of my favorites is designed for boats by Navigator Stoveworks located on Orcas Island in Washington State. It is tiny, can fit on top of a stand to reduce clearances and has a 4" flue. It is too expensive for me at the moment, but I will definitely be looking out for used ones.


No comments:

Post a Comment