Happy New Year!!!

As with the last post of 2019, I struggled with the topic of the first post of 2020.  I mean, it has been more than a week with no posts, so it should be something substantial, and it’s the first post of the new year, so maybe something positive…hopeful…uplifting?  Starting off way down in the nitty-gritty didn’t seem right, and I didn’t have a holiday vacation in Europe with lots of beautiful door photos to share.

Then…it arrived.  An email from Scott Foley of Sunrise Door Solutions.  Over the past months I’ve been watching the progress of some amazing hollow metal frames on Facebook, and I had asked Scott for some photos of the finished product.  Yes – that’s what I said…AMAZING HOLLOW METAL FRAMES.

I have a very deep appreciation for door-related creativity, and I know from experience how difficult some of these “special” openings can be.  When I opened the architectural elevations for these frames, I got a little misty – maybe from remembering the pain of past projects where the architect asked for something that seemed impossible.

Side Note:  The project is an elementary school.  I can hear some of you saying that the money would be better spent on something else for the school, but these openings will be in place for years to come and definitely make the educational environment more fun and exciting.  In this day and age when school districts are spending thousands of dollars on retrofit security gadgets that may or may not actually help (and could have negative consequences), I’d much rather see money spent on door frames that look like boats.  🙂

Due to manufacturing restrictions for the frames and/or glass, some of the angles needed to be modified…here is one of the submittal elevations:

Here’s the first frame welded up, and the delivery – WOW!  The lead time was 12 weeks, but personally I don’t think that’s bad at all!  The glass order required plywood templates for each piece, just to double-check the shapes and sizes.

The rough installation:

And finally, the openings in place:

Cool, right??  The frames were made by National Custom Hollow Metal, and the glass was supplied by McGrory Glass.  Thank you to everyone who participated in this project, including Sunrise Door and Scott Foley – the openings look amazing!

If you’ve had a tough project like this one, I’d love to hear about it (and see the photos, of course)!

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