Who:
David Hohle
Member of Special Places Team #2
Where:
South St. Paul, MN
The door I am re-finishing today was obtained from a salvage yard in St. Paul. I had picked up the window a couple months ago at an estate auction. The triple double-hung window in the background (on the house) is also from the salvage yard. Door hinges, door knobs, and knob plates were all found on my trips to antique stores to match the door hardware elsewhere in the house.
When I wanted to expand the front bedroom into office space, I also wanted to maintain the overall aethestics of the house, both inside and out. The large window glass has beveled edging to match the house entry door and the mirrors of the built-in hutch and bathroom vanity of this 1926 house. The solid oak door has panels that match the other doors, although I did add a new deadbolt lock. The new porch walls are six-inch stud with additional insulation below the floor and above the original beaded wood ceiling.
I created a separate electrical circuit with appropriately spaced grounded outlets and a wall outlet for cable and telephone jacks. The original bedroom only had two two-prong outlets for the whole room. Check your house to see how this compares to today's codes!
I knocked out the bedroom wall to the porch, re-used the bedroom window in the new side wall of the office, and made a header (beam) across the opening from old roof rafters of a garage I tore down in an earlier project.
