These are doors I made to replace a wall of full length mirrored doors from the 70's.
This is for my parents house, my mom told me what she wanted them to look like and I
took it from there. I tried to copy the existing molding around the bedroom door, and window.
The mirrors used to be floor to ceiling, the new doors look like they have always been there, a huge improvement
to the 100+ year old house. No more disco
This project gave me some headaches and it drove home the importance of choosing perfect lumber when making doors.
I used 6/4 maple and a set of freuds door bits to make the stick and panel doors.
I bought the maple from a lumber yard with limited stock. At the time I noticed some slight bowing in the lumber, but it
did not look that bad, and I thought it would just flatten out once I got the doors together. That was a big mistake.
After milling the pieces some of the doors rails had a noticeable cupping to them, I ended up planing them down, which worked, but now the
door parts were close to 5/4
This caused a problem fitting the doors together, as the freud bits I used were made for thicker stock.
After some creative sanding I got the doors together, painted and installed. And guess what, more bowing in the wood. One of the doors has
twisted out slightly preventing it from closing even with the door next to it, of course it had to be one of the doors in the middle.
Rather than making a new door, I'm going to plane it down till it closes properly. After painting I don't think you'll be able to see a difference,
it's the inside corner that needs about an 1/8" taken off it. I will never buy lumber in a rush again.
I got the mirror from a local glass shop. It's 1/4" thick and covered with a 1/4" plywood backing.
The ply is held on by 1" wide x 1/8" thick strips covering the door frame and ply. I hope that makes sense, I did not take any pics of the backs.
In the end I like the doors quite a bit, and my parents are happy with them, that's what counts
