Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Doing the first thing last!

In the continuing saga of the Cheers office,....ironically, the last thing I ended up doing was the first thing I had conceived of and honestly was the entire scope of the project when I first considered doing it,....
The door.


That Iconic door was just about the apex of my grand plan. I thought,...."I'll just do up my door like the Cheers door!" and as the project blossomed into madness from there, the door fell by the wayside.

But as the project neared completion, the door turned into the cherry on the sundae, so to speak.

I got to work by digitally re-mastering the Cheers logo in Photoshop and having a local sign shop print it onto a sheet of acrylic. I then designed the framing insert to slip the acrylic into.

I then set about finding the proper boards to skin the door with. In dealing with the height and width restrictions of the door I found that six inch wide boards gave the door just about the right shape.


The Cheers door is considerably shorter and a tad wider but I had to work with what I had.



Now while leaving a hole in the wood to accommodate the deadbolt was easy, (though I still screwed it up), It was gonna be quite a different story to make puzzle pieces to account for the awkward industrial door handle and while I considered it, I took the lazy man's way out and simply left a gap in the wood. Because measuring something in one place, and crafting something for it in another can often be a tricky proposition.


It's amazing what a coat of Walnut stain can do.



And after three coats of polyurethane gloss, it was ready for a test-fit!


Here we see the skinning of the door in progress,....and the one board I screwed up. The hole I drilled was 1/2 in too low. :-(
Can you imagine if I'd tried to muddle my way around that handle? I never said I was a carpenter. I'm an artist who builds stuff! Occasionally I even use TOOLS!

OH! And in case you were wondering how I stuck the boards to the door? It's a magic little invention called industrial strength Velcro!

More to come!

3 comments:

  1. Never sell yourself short. Remember your first attempt at fiberglass? Now look at you. You are a jack of many trades, my good sir. Imagine what would happen if you gave that door one more shot? I'm sure you could even work around the handle.

    It looks outstanding, man. Good work.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Just wait Tony he just might if I know him. ;P

    ReplyDelete
  3. Oh, I know he's never going to be happy with that handle. He's going to keep looking at it, and looking at it, and start obsessing over it...

    ReplyDelete