I got a call from the son of one of my clients. I had done quite a lot of work over the years for his father, and was excited to start a new project with his son on his new home in Newport Beach.
The house gravitates toward modern, but the client wanted more of a distressed European look for the entryway, which is an interesting contrast that works really well. He also wanted it to be a Dutch door. The door is 60” wide x 96” high x 3” thick. It’s a large heavy door. He explained what he liked and I came up with a design. We decided to use Black Oak.
To backtrack, four years ago I had the opportunity to cut down some dead Black Oak trees in Julian, California, trees that would have gone to waste if no one had come forward to remove them. I had them sawed into large slabs of lumber and air dried them for four years in the backyard of my shop.
Black Oak is difficult to find in lumberyards and it’s one of my favorite woods to work with. It has variable colors with a tight texture, and is beautiful for architectural work. As usual, we built everything, finished it and installed it with all the hardware. It turned out magnificent.
