Pocket Doors

When we removed all the plaster from the stairwell in our old house we discovered the rails for sliding 8' double pocket doors between the stairwell and the living room. Of course in my quest for historical accuracy (not to mention more light and openness), this meant that we had to find old pocket doors to fit in the space, and thus began a daily early morning Internet search that eventually yielded a pair of promising doors at Sunset Antiques in Oxford, Michigan (www.WilliamsArtGlass.com), north of Detroit, more than eight hours from here. DH, ever one to seize the day, insisted that we had to go the next weekend or miss our chance altogether, and so we trekked north in two vehicles. DH, DS and our exchange student son from Brazil led the way in our truck, and I followed with my sister from Texas in my little Toyota.

It was a long trip, involving an overnight at the very comfortable Waterloo Gardens Inn. When we finally got to Oxford on Sunday morning, the doors were just as stunning as we thought they would be. The folks at Sunset were very accommodating and found wheels for them, too. While we were there my sister and I fell in love with several stained glass windows, including a gorgeous nativity scene sadly removed from a cathedral in a neighborhood in Detroit hard-hit by difficult economic times.

There was an ominous black cloud in front of us as we crossed the Michigan-Indiana line, and it erupted into driving rain for several minutes, during which my heart sank as I envisioned our beautiful doors, protected only by a tarp in the back of our red truck, all swollen and waterlogged. I called DH on my cell, advising that we tuck into a gas station with a large roof until the rain let up, but he knew better, and as usual he was right: the doors arrived in perfect condition, and he wasted no time at all in getting them installed. Now when the doors are open the stairwell and living room are like a single space, and when they are closed they are beautiful.