What if a house could hold the story of where you've been, and who you are?
- Mark Elster and Joey Osborne
- 6 days ago
- 3 min read
Updated: 5 days ago
That's the vision these AOME clients brought to us –and the kind of challenge we love to take on!
He's from India. She spent years working, volunteering and living there, forming deep bonds with the country and people. Now in the U.S., India is part of who they are. So they came to us wondering:
"How can we incorporate India heritage treasures into our home?"
They and their acquisition team went looking from warehouse to warehouse in India, discovering over 30 antique doors, among other treasures. Each door had a history and was unique, but not all suited to the home we were designing. After careful evaluation of these options, we narrowed down to 15 doors that could be adapted to prominent openings throughout the house.
Many of these doors were heavily deteriorated and required extensive restoration and re-building. Very few of them had finished panels on both sides —so we had to devise a way to seamlessly blend suitable finished panels for those unfinished portions.
Additionally, none of the doors were the right size for the openings. Some were very short, some had two leaves when we needed one, requiring new parts carved, finished and distressed to complete the doors.
So, we began working across continents and time zones with talented artisans coordinated by a team of antique treasure hunters based in India. First, we trained them to scan the doors remotely and send them to our States side design team to fully model the existing conditions.
For every door, we created a set of plans: 2D and 3D diagrams detailing exactly what needed to be repaired or reshaped. All while navigating the challenge of merging two systems of measurement.
Likewise, we developed a standardized process for turning the scans into models and documentation we could work with at AOME:
Along with the documentation, we also put together an extensive terminology glossary to aid communication between AOME and the acquisition and crafstman teams in India, who were unfamiliar with reading construction drawings:
Door by door, each piece was restored. This process went on, working in rhythm with the home's construction over two years, while we waited for the doors to be ready and shipped to our job site in Washington.
Our team experienced the logistics hurdles of shipping across the world first hand!
On the India side:
Extensive documentation compliant with cultural heritage export controls
Scheduling and tracking the containers through two ports of call for confirmation there were no contraband materials (this unpredictable process made the projected arrival date off by two months!)
On the U.S. side:
Either due to X-raying the container or random selection, U.S. customs delayed shipment while they opened up the container and all the shipping crates, again looking for contraband.
A shipping company trucked the container all the way from LA to Washington.
Local millwork-door craftsmen (Bob Johnson Woodworking, LLC & Chaney Construction Company) stored the bulky shipment in their shop, making minor adjustments and adding door hardware, getting the doors ready for installation.
And now, the first door is in place!
After three years of acquisition, documenting, designing, restoring, recrafting, refinishing, packing and shipping, the state side team at Toth Construction and subcontractors, K.C. Finish, Inc. & Chaney Construction Company are now installing the doors one at a time.
This is our interior designer, Keith Miller, after seeing the first one installed:
And now, so you can truly appreciate the transformation, here’s a look at the before and after of the first door, both front and back. As shown above elevation detail, the front had to be enlarged with new panels, and the back had to be built completely from scratch:
More updates coming soon in this series, as the next doors are already in the process of being installed!
