Dentil shelf ready to attach

We found this beautiful six light, three panel fir door on Craig's list. It's a blank with no holes or hinge mounts. Since part of the plan for the Bungaloft is to maintain a bungalow character at the front of the house, I decided to add a typical Craftsman door detail - a dentil shelf.

A couple of pieces of very nice, quarter-sawn fir taken out of the house during the demo phase were hanging out in the shop so I did a few variations on shape and proportion of the three basic components until I landed on one that seemed to work best. In the photo above, the dentil shelf layout is complete with an initial finish coat applied in preparation for gluing the assembly to the front of the middle door rail. There is no finish on the door at this point so the color is different from the dentil shelf.

A couple of other pieces of 8/4 quarter-sawn fir will be used to make the door frame with. I also had some weather seal products left over from an earlier project. The adjustable door bottom seal from Resource Conservation Technologies has been mounted into the door at this point and will be followed with WS-14 silicone jamb seals mounted into the door jambs and head once I fabricate the door frame and threshold.

Although the door is not insulated, the six lights are double pane, bevelled glass so, combined with the weather seals, this should be a reasonably energy efficient entry door.

I wanted hardware that wasn't necessarily traditional Craftsman while still retaining some of the character of the style. So when I saw this Emtek Tuscany cast bronze knob set at my favorite local hardware store - WC Winks, it seemed like a good fit. A nicely matching deadbolt and hinge set completes the package.

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