Searching for doors...

The "Eastlake" door, designed by a British architect, has a distinctive design with specific detail around the recessed panels. The code words "Eastlake 5-P 33x80" allowed us to rummage through over 3,500 doors in 5 hours and find 6 doors that fit the description.

Here is what we currently have in our house and below are the "treasures" we found in Berkeley.

Urban Ore and Omega Salvage boasted thousands of reclaimed doors from the beautiful San Francisco Victorians. They were not exaggerating!!  We spent an entire day going through salvaged doors. Stacked in long aisles like this. Word to the wise...This is not a trip for the faint of heart or the non-robust shopper. It took us about 5 hours to locate 6 doors among the more than 3,500 possible doors.

One in 100 doors that come into the salvage world is an Eastlake, and we needed specific sizes to fit our design. A bit of a "needle in a haystack experience". Most old doors run narrow, around 27-29 inches. We needed  32 inch interior doors and one exterior door that was at least 34 inches.  We also needed 2 identical pocket doors to fit a 9 feet tall opening.




The varying heights give you an idea of the many shortening events these doors have sustained over the years. Carpet installations were probably the main reason for chopping the doors. Urban Ore had broad categories of doors like short, tall, extra tall, and solid core.  Not a lot to go on, especially when you don't know the Dewey Decimal system for doors.

Between these two locations, and a generous friend who had an Eastlake exterior door in her garage, we managed to fill every doorway with authentic, solid core, Eastlake doors. I can't wait to see them hung.


The identical 9 foot pocket doors. These weight about 150 pounds a piece. They will need to be joined together to make one massive sliding pocket door.  I am sure my contractor will groan when he sees them. They are monsters. When doing a restoration, you just have to love the authenticity even when the price is a aching back.

 This beautiful old door will be our back entrance. Original, wavy, leaded glass makes it look spectacular and the "Apple" sticker tells me it hasn't been living in a warehouse for long.

These two pristine doors were a wonderful find.

The final two doors we found had survived a fire and will need some TLC to get them back in shape.

I ended up with one extra exterior door (not pictured) that is only 29 inches wide, too small for my entrances. Using Houzz and Pintrist, I found wonderful options for using this door for the pantry or cabinet in the dining room. It will need some glue and glass, but once it is finished it will add another element of "new/old" for our house.