Unhinged doors still have use

Dear Sandi: “We just bought an old warehouse door from a demolition sale. It still says the name of the warehouse in faint lettering just slightly visible on a portion of the door. I need help to know what to do with this or where to put it in my home to take full advantage of it’s classic heritage and style. Do I just prop it up in the corner of my living room? Or can I do something more dramatic? Any ideas?” Mary Lou S. Corvallis, OR

Dear Mary Lou: Perhaps you are afflicted with the same condition that I am – I think they call it something like “old archeitecturalitis”. The symptoms are dragging home old windows, doors and other structural remnants from once elegant (or not so elegant) buildings and houses. Others (like husbands sometimes) will call it trash, but we know better – it is treasure, just waiting to be reincarnated into it’s next life.

Whether you're looking for handmade paper, furniture, fabric or accessories, you will find it at loose ends. If it is unusual, organic and fabulous, then loose ends is the place. Showroom hours are 8 am to 5 pm weekdays and the first Saturday of each month 10 am - 3pm at 2065 Madrona Ave. SE, Salem, or visit us online at www.looseends.com Questions? Give us a call at (503) 390-2348.

Ok, so you have the wonderful old door – now what? Yes, you can, of course, prop it up in a corner, and actually make a small vignette, using the door as the anchor piece. You could turn the area into your own private reading/meditating space by adding an old, overstuffed chair and maybe a funky old wall sconce could be attached to the top of the door, illuminating the door’s lettering and providing reading light. Add a small side table with enough room for a cup of herbal tea and you would have a wonderfully inviting place to spend some personal time, (maybe perusing books on using “found objects” or junk yard decorating”?)

Another option is to use it for what it was originally intended for – a door. This, of course, will depend greatly on your home's’ present configuration and décor but often a great old door can replace a “ho hum” bedroom or closet door inside the house. Also take a look at the transition areas in your home, the places where you move from one room to another. Although these are usually much more open and wider places than an actual “doorway” you can always play with the idea of attaching a great old door to one side of the opening, changing both the character of the opening and creating a totally different ambiance for the room.

A few years ago Art and I bought some old Chinese doors. I had no idea what we would do with them, but they were just too wonderful to pass up. Our house doesn’t have a lot of extra room, but there was a fairly large opening between the dining room and the living room. Art attached the doors to either side of the opening, leaving about a 15” open space between the two when they were swung shut. They added a great touch to both rooms and that space between the rooms was just hanging out there doing nothing anyway!

Another one of our favorite ways to use an old door is to turn it into a table. We did that with an old sunken panel door from a residential razing. We have it in our Paper Room at the shop and use it for everything from a conference table to a great place to spread out all the handmade paper sample books. Because our door had sunken panels, we placed a few “found objects” (tiny starfish, shells, pebbles, etc.) in the panels, then had a piece of glass cut to fit over the top, giving us a smooth working surface. For the legs we took four old windows (what else?) covered them in handmade paper, then hinged two together for each end of the table and settled the door on top. It looks and works great. Although most homes probably don’t need a conference table, it is the perfect size for a dining room table, or, if you have a studio for your “afflictions” it makes a wonderful worktable. It would also probably work equally well in a sewing room, giving you plenty of room for spreading out fabric, etc.

Sandi Reinke is an author, frequent television guest and lead designer for loose ends (www.loosends.com), a Salem-based interior décor, garden, and casual lifestyle company. To ask Reinke a decorating question, e-mail info@looseends.com or mail her at the showroom address, 2065 Madrona Ave. SE, Salem, OR 97302. Phone: 503-390-2348.

If you live in one of those houses that have soaring ceilings and walls that go on forever, you might also want to consider using the door as a piece of artwork, hung either horizontally or vertically. If you really have “walls unlimited” you could even add an old window or two, maybe a discarded piece of antique wall molding, an old tin ceiling tile, etc. and make an “architectural gallery”.

For those folks that need to have something be practical, not just decorative, we have a friend who had a large expanse of empty wall space in her “mudroom” entry. She hung a great old wooden door horizontally on the wall, then attached a collection of old coat hooks she had to the bottom edge.