distillery doors

I can't remember why we started looking at doors so early in this whole project. That and the sink for the bathroom. The sink was the first thing we bought! More on that another time though.
So. The doors.
We found this awesome door on line called a speakeasy door. It was a heavy wooden door with a small window that had a metal grate over it. The ones we found on line were anywhere from $2,000 to $4,000. We went to Lowes and they did one of those estimates on their little computer design program, and when we got to the end of that process, the door was $4,900! We did look at some other entry door styles, but by now we've got our hearts set on this door.
Ok, we need to get creative, cause we are NOT spending that much money on a door. Besides, we need 2 doors!
Could I faux paint a plain door? Probably, but still not happy with that idea. Then I looked at our refrigerator, which we had covered with thin wainscott wood strips.

Maybe that would work, but would it hold up to outdoor conditions? We decided to do a 'practice' door on the back of our garage. There is a plain steel out-swing door that was just painted. So we bought some pine wainscott and I stained it with exterior stain and applied 3 coats of spar varnish. I think we did that in September, and it still looks great.

it looks pretty cool! even with that ugly door handle.

 We figured we give it a try for the distillery doors.....

We had to buy fire rated exterior doors that open out. These are steel insulated doors with the wire mesh in the glass window. Not very attractive...

We decided to go with the cedar wainscott instead of pine, we thought it might hold up better to the elements.

We laid out the panels and pre-cut everything to fit each door. I numbered and labeled the back of each piece so I would know which door the pieces went to.

The tongues did not fit into the grooves on a lot of the pieces, so Vince just cut the back edge of the groove off so they would butt up against each other. The front part of the groove still overlapped the tongue.

I put 1 coat of exterior stain on the back and 2 coats on the front, then 3 coats of exterior spar varnish. I also put 2 coats of dark brown exterior paint on the doors to help protect them just in case any water may get behind the wood, and if any of the door was not covered by the wood, it wouldn't be as noticeable.

We glued the strips of wood onto the doors with Gorilla brand glue, then put some heavy weights on there to hold it down while the glue set up.

We bought some fancy trim and cut that to fit around the window.

Stained, antiqued and varnished. Then we glued them to the doors.

Now to start the details! We bought these furniture tacks and Vince drilled tiny holes so the wood wouldn't split while putting them in. We added a dab of glue on the back of each tack for extra measure.

Drilling out the holes for the knob and deadbolt.

We got this garage door kit at Home Depot for $35.00. We had found some faux hinges on line but they were about $35 each! So we decided to go with these since the one kit would do both doors.

 

I rubbed a little metallic copper paint on them to add a little character.

Vince had to chisel the wood out from where the door handle goes, the door was too thick for the latch shaft. We did not have that problem with our 'test' door on the garage. The deadbolt was fine.

The finished door, installed on the tasting room entrance. We are looking for a cool dragon doorknocker to put on it.

This the one on the distillery entrance, Vince put one of the door pulls on for a doorknocker.

We are really happy with the way they came out, they ended up costing about $650 each by the time we got done, not including the latches (they were $130 each). I think they will make a great first impression when people come up!