The final main part of my kitchen remodeling from last year has been staring me in the face for months. Make that years. The kitchen/back door. The current door is a metal/insulated beige thing with a stamped frame & panel pattern and faux muntin/mullions. It's been ugly since it was installed ten or so years ago, and its even uglier following the kitchen getting awesome. It's time has come.
The new door is going to match the kitchen - classic craftsman style quarter sawn white oak. I played around with several ideas for it: a 9-lite, a 6-lite, and finally settled on a simple 1-lite, as it seemed the best compromise between too much window (the 9-lite) and too much door (the 6-lite). Our front door has a 15° "Shaker" profile to it, and I was thinking of matching that, but went with the much simpler straight craftsman profile.
9-lite design
6-lite design
1-lite design - final
With that decided, I picked out some great lumber from my local hardwood dealer, marked out the cuts of the parts, and started in. I milled the parts to rough dimensions, and while I was at it, one of the rail pieces had grain that was a little "out of square". I had about 2" of extra width to play with, so I angled the cut to square up the grain direction better. It was still a little off, but well within acceptable limits. I pushed all the way through to the assembly (today), and am looking forward to the next steps. Here's a gallery of the build to date...
