Our poor yard. Ever since that big, ugly purple monster moved in, the whole plat has gone to heck. First there was the dead grass killed by the dumpster and the storage pod. Then there was the havoc that was wreaked by the driveway installation. Now there is plain old neglect to deal with.
In a fit of inspiration, we bought a cordless electric mower (Homelite — Home Depot was having a sale). It did most of our thick, moist, weedy lawn and needed to be recharged overnight to finish up the last patch. We gave it a thumbs up.
In a fit of desperation, we began to build a fence for the front yard. We live on a very busy street and we have two highly energetic boys as well as a spastic puppy and curious kitty.

Then we were deluged with door orders. The lawn is starting to look a little like it did a few weeks ago in the above photo once again. I’m thinking we take all of the damaged goods we’ve been stockpiling in our guest bedroom and pile them in the front yard, creating both an effective barrier as well as a no-holds-barred advertising campaign all in one. What are your thoughts?

I had decided to work with a local glass shop. They are close, not corporate at all and, I am beginning to learn, totally incompetent (see below). My first door was ordered on March 15. I bought glass right away.
Here is the comedy of errors in order:
1. Made 3, not 5 pieces
2. Made two more, broke one
3. Replaced that one, but put the wrong color spacer in it.
4. Replaced that one, but put a big ugly tempered logo on it.
5. One of the pieces from step 1 had glue between the panes and had to be rebuilt
6. Today I pick up the 2 replacements, wrong thickness. Now that I’m looking at the thickness, I realize 2 others are the wrong thickness.
So two months, 9 pieces of insulated glass built, countless phone calls and trips to the shop and I still have 4 bad pieces and only one good one. And that’s just one door. Four other doors are being held up by 10 pieces of glass that I had to return. They’ve been telling me tomorrow since Thursday.
If the mill hadn’t been a similar (actually worse) comedy of errors, I might have noticed earlier.
I tried to go to another glass shop. A big corporate shop. They cost more and the materials suck. The reeded glass there is a joke. I wouldn’t have known the difference, but the glass from the little glass shop of horrors is gorgeous.
Lots of people are spontaneously telling me not to give up. Hmm.
Here is one cool thing that happened in the last week. I found a shop to build name plates for the doors.

We banged one up attaching it to a two-by-four to test out different nails and screws. I’m looking at the difference between engraved or printed serial numbers.
The rectangle at the top will have an image of the door and the wide one will have the date and customer name.
I’m printing the first batch with black serial numbers. The numbers are raised and have a little texture to them.
So which do you like, printed black serial number or engraved?
Editied to Add: I tried another glass shop, and it sucked much more than the Little Glass Shop of Horrors. Everybody sends their IG glass orders to the same place. So it’s not the problem, but how you deal with the problem, and LGSoH has been not half bad.

The first run of Crestview Doors is almost over. We’ve sold 10 of the first 12. After the last 2 are sold we will stop taking orders until June.
That should give us enough time to build and ship those doors, evaluate the business model, and to build the online store.
With the Violet Crown Festival over, I had a little extra time to build mockups for a customer. Put you mouse over the small images below to see the different doors. The first one is the current door. The 2nd is a “Piedmont” with dark cherry stain and a vintage escutcheon, and 3rd is a “Pasadena” with black paint.


Which one would you choose?

The Violet Crown Festival was just 4 days ago, but it feels like it was forever ago. It was a dominant part of our world for 3-5 months but within 24 hours after the festival, we were back to our normal routine.
To re-cap, Christiane and I co-chaired the festival. Really, she chaired it. The day of the festival Christiane was on the grounds for 12 hours, from set-up to tear-down. She was on her feet, on the radio, making the rounds, and answering questions the whole time. It was a marathon.
To get an idea how big it is:
7 community food and beverage vendors
15 children’s activities
15 entertainment and musical acts on 2 stages
22 sponsored events
39 artisan booths
43 sponsors (cash, goods, in-kind)
49 community exhibitors
hundreds of auctioned items
almost 5,000 visitors
And it was great fun. Can’t wait until next year.

I returned 11 of the first 15 windows to be rebuilt. I still don’t have a finished door to photograph. It’s amazing to me that 5 people have bought doors from me based on illustrations. So I’m getting photos as quickly as I can.

BTW, those are not my hands. (I hear that’s an old Martha Stewart trick. You photograph someone wearing a blue sweater while making hand made soap. Then publish a picture of Martha in the same sweater.) This is Michael, a very experienced and perfectionist carpenter. You wouldn’t know from his beautiful old-world tools, but he starts his projects in AutoCAD.
I wanted to show the solid wood construction of these doors. Describing it in an email falls short. Here you can really see how solid it is. And these door are heavy.

For customers who have already ordered a door, I’m sending a block cut out from their door to test stain on. (I can thank one of my customers for that great idea.)

These go in the mail today.

The first 4 doors are in production. They are looking soooooo good. For all the delays and phone calls and damage and returned wrong stuff, this is the big pay off. Just look at the grain on this door.

It will be a “Pasadena” (three square windows) with frosted glass and a vintage doorknob escutcheon.

This is the glass for those 4 doors (and a sidelight). It is surprisingly heavy. Maybe even heavier than the wood it will displace. I get a little freaked out carrying it across the parking lot. Like people who fear driving themselves off a mountain road, I feel irrationally tempted to drop it just to see the tempered glass break into a million pieces.
I’m defining what “Pre-order” means. I’ve decided to build 12 doors before doing a real launch of the store. There are 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 left, and I’m selling them at introductory prices. Which just means that they may cost more after. I honestly don’t know if I’m making money at this point. I’m just making a company. And a few beautiful doors.