After my request for readers to send me photos of hardware applications seen on their summer vacations, I received some photos of the entrance doors to the  Notre Dame des Victoires Church in Quebec City, Canada.  The church was erected in 1688, and is Quebec’s oldest stone church.

To the untrained eye, these look like ordinary entrance doors, but if you look closely you’ll notice the U.H.O.s (Unidentified Hardware Objects).  There is a piece of wood at the top of the inside face of each door, which is visible but likely unnoticed in the millions of tourist photos taken over the years, including the ones in this unsuspecting couple’s wedding album:

So what’s the deal??

These doors were apparently retrofitted with overhead stops at some point.  Overhead stops are used to limit a door’s degree of opening when a wall- or floor-stop can’t be used because the door doesn’t open to a wall, or there’s something behind the door.  In this case, the stops would have to be extended-height floor stops mounted on the stone landing, which could be a tripping hazard.

To transform the overhead stops to overhead holders, a block of wood was placed in each track when the doors needed to be held open.  Because the doors are 8′ tall, a handy extension was added so that the blocks could be placed in the track by someone who didn’t have an 8′ reach.

If you happen to be a hardware supplier in Quebec City, you may want to stop by the church and let them know that overhead holders (without wood blocks) are available from Glynn-Johnson.  From the looks of the planing on the door edge, they may have some other door issues you can help with.

Thank you to Bob Caron of Kelley Brothers of New England (and his poor traveling companion who had to deal with the embarrassment of Bob taking door photos) for the close-ups.  And thanks to the Happy Couple as well.

You need to login or register to bookmark/favorite this content.