A Closet

Client: Sean Kelley
Location: Queen Village, Philadelphia

Sean had built and framed up his closet on the second floor of his timber-framed trinity house in Queen Village. He framed up the opening 90 inches in height to give him access to the upper shelves. While this made perfect sense, he was having trouble finding doors to fit the opening.

Unbeknownst to us, a few days before, Restore had salvaged a pair of doors from a house on 22nd and Fitzwater. They were standing beside Linda's desk when i walked in, and it became evident that they belonged about twenty-five blocks away from their previous home.

Sean decided to stick with the vintage iron pull chain latch, whose hardware linda had kindly included along with the doors – along with the original screws and loose-pin hinges, with their ornate scrollwork. We trimmed out the door, using a palm router with a roundover bit to make a custom accent, and calibrating the height of the trim to continue the line of the window trim from wall perpendicular to the closet.


Client Testimonial

"Holy s— the doors are beautiful.  So much better than I expected.  It was hard to get a sense from that photograph. They're incredible. This house is 170 years old (not that you can really tell), and it's got all this great detail assembled from all sorts of periods.  I love those doors and know they're going to be there for the next hundred years.  They're just so perfect.  And goddamn solid.  Those are some serious f—ing doors.

"I'm pretty stoked...I never knew I could get this excited about a closet door."

Sean Kelley

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