A Good Door is Hard to Find

    One takes doors for granted. They are always just 'there'. 
    But in our case they weren't.  Of the ten door frames in the house, only three doors remained. The avid Irish gardener who owned the house before us took almost every one with her. They must have been lovely.
    The only door we've thus far replaced is the one that leads down the deep dark stairway to the cellar. It was imperative that we do so because not only was it an unsightly maw but the sound of the boiler scared the bejesus out of our cat. And thanks to our thoughtful neighbor we were able to do so.

   We aren't in much of a hurry to replace the others because we are looking for doors that suit the house. We can't find them at Home Depot. They aren't at Ring's End. They are most likely stuffed into an old couple's barn or standing in the shadows of a dusty antique shop.
   Two months ago we were searching through thrift shops and ReStores hoping to find something suitable for a back door but we were forced to move on. There were just too many other tasks. All this frigid winter we have been missing the outer back door to the house.

   
   We were on the verge of buying a new one out of sheer frustration and impatience, but one afternoon in January, as I was puttering around the shed and finding someone's lost matchbox cars, I opened the door beneath the shed for the cat. Oreo adores the shed as we do. I wandered in after her and kicked around in the corners between the left-behind bucket of fertilizer and a transom window, when, lo and behold, I came across a door.

The room under the shed

     
   Now we had found several doors under the shed but they had all proven much too large for the likes of this little house, so we traded them at a local antique shop. One was intriguing insofar as it had a built-in doorbell which Pete removed for possible future use. So I thought I had found just another old but generally useless door, until I walked it up into the light.

    This was the door I had been looking for all along - except for the fact that it was merely a screen. But it had such good lines and it was such a strange old shade of green. Though there is now every shade of paint under the sun available, there is something about the old colors that seem to glow. Perhaps it's the lead.

   Like Cinderella' s slipper the door fit the frame perfectly, well .... almost. So now it is just a matter of waiting for the temperatures to rise enough to melt the snow which in turn will allow us to feel our fingers long enough to prepare the frame, so we can finally put up the screen door and welcome the glorious heat and flies of a hot day.

                     *****ONE OF THOSE WONDERFUL MOMENTS IN LIFE*****

I came back from teaching mid-afternoon today and pushed open the gate...

Strolled down the path...

Turned the corner and .... (audible gasp)

   Pete had hung the door to welcome our first day in the fifties. 
Oh tremendous joy! 
   There is no sound so full of possibility as the slap of an old screen door.

Changing Mantras

   For over a year we searched for a house with our divinely appointed realtor Shelly, and our mantra was always "what's wrong with this one?" We were pragmatic enough to realize we could never afford a place advertised as "move in condition". Nor did we want that. We preferred a home that needed us. It remains baffling however that we could fall in love with a place that needed so very much attention. I have no idea what we were thinking.
   If the previous owners liked their lighting fixtures which I noted disappeared with them, they must have been passionate about their doors. They left us only three. The cellar doorway was a dark gaping maw into the living room, and it was but one of many.

Cellar doorway on left- door elsewhere

 Around the remaining front and back doors there blew exposed insulation and sundry wall stuffing. The same could be said of  many of the windows. So our work was literally cut out for us and, as I have mentioned,  we had never done such things. Sometimes our solutions weren't perfect - nay, our solutions were never perfect. And it was out of those imperfections that the new mantra was born - "it's better than it used to be". One can get a lot of mileage out of that mantra. Simple things like a nicely painted door began to make a great deal of difference.

   And a good story goes with that door. I introduced myself to a neighbor whom I thought had a fine looking chicken house in his back yard. He laughed at the idea that chickens live there when, in effect, he does during cider season. Beside the cider house stands a garden enclosed with chicken wire, and on the north side of the fence is a lovely old door painted a pale mossy green. I told him the story of our missing cellar door and some days later he called to say he had found a good door for us.  It was indeed a beauty, and when I offered him money he told me it was his house warming gift. As was a parting bottle of cider. And a loaf of banana bread from his dear wife Louise.