A door dilemma

We ran into a little door dilemma when I went to order the new door for the added powder room on the main level. I figured the solid wood, 6-panel doors that are original to the house would be rather easy to match. However, my search left me empty handed after visiting several lumber and millwork yards. The dimensions of my door weren't exactly helping - a 2 foot wide door isn't all that common these days, but because we were trying to avoid a pocket door (we had more issues with them at our last house than we felt were worth the space savings), it meant keeping this door uber petite as to not obstruct its swing by getting hung up on the sink.

The dilemma with the door was stemming from the profile of the "sticking" on the panels of the door. Sticking is the little decorative edge that connects the raised part of the door to the actual inset part of the panel. Here's an example of a diagram of some sticking 'options':

Doors come with a variety of sticking options...but the one I have seems to be extremely unpopular these days. Being that this powder room door sits right next to the basement door, I did feel pressured to find a perfect match.

I was left with two options: 1) Find the most similar sticking I can and settle for a not-so-perfect-match or 2) Consider a custom made door matched to my size and profile specifications.

My knees were shaking at the idea of a custom door and dollar signs seemed to be coming out of the woodwork. But I gave Greg Simon of Cutting Edge Millwork a call anyway to see if he could help. He came out to the house and checked out my existing doors, took some measurements of the door I need and headed back to his workshop. To my absolute delight, I received a call from him saying he HAS an old door in my exact dimensions and with my exact profile. HUZZAH! In all honesty, it never crossed my mind to check out someplace like the Habitat For Humanity ReStore or someplace similar to look for a used door, which probably would have been a great place to start. But I'm so pleased to have found a perfect match through Greg...and at about 1/3 of the price of having a custom door built.

Now if I can just take a quick moment to give a little door advice while I have you here. When dealing with wood doors, you have to be very careful when you choose to paint them. Being that we have painted woodwork in our house, we too need to be aware of the following. Wood doors these days can be purchased with the panels made out of MDF. Wood doors shrink and expand according to the weather and moisture in the air. With the panels made out of wood and being a separate piece from the actual frame of the door, your panels can shrink considerably leaving you with either cracked paint and/or exposed wood where you otherwise wouldn't have had it. Check out this image below:

It's not the end of the world and a simple bead of caulk or touch up paint can solve it, but I think the MDF panels end up looking nicer as they don't posses the same weather-dependent qualities that wood does.

So that's all for our little door dilemma. Can't wait for it to be installed once the tile goes in. Which, by the way, did I tell you it was delivered in the wrong color? ARGH! Just keeping it real here...