With finishing carpentry touches clueing up in some of the rooms in Pardy House and the interior painter settling in for the next two weeks, one understated feature that may be overlooked is our newly reinstalled door hardware.
Months ago I discussed the beautiful hinges found on the doors of our heritage home and about to be once more installed on our original 130 year old pine doors. Until recently the true detail of our now reused door knobs and face plates was hidden under multiple layers of paint. Now, after hours of work by our painter and handy man, these cleaned pieces add an unparalleled feel of originality and history to our home. During a site visit this week, Leann and I took a minute or two to stand back and admire the immaculate detail found on some of these supposedly "simple" hardware pieces.
Most amazing is the fact that these cleaned and reinstalled knobs work as well now as they must have, over 100 years ago. Even more amazing are the fully functional key and slider locks. Key locks I have seen before but I had not, until this week, noticed the box slider locks present on some of our doors.
As seen in one of the photos, the box and knob system is large and noticeable but atop these boxes are small, almost button like, metallic squares which can slide from left to right. Once this small inconspicuous square is slid from left to right the knob cannot be turned. Small things often times impress me the most since I must have discussed this little feature five times with Leann before she actually made it to the house to see for herself. Clearly I was boring her since she thought the locks were "really nice" but....... the interior paint colours trumped locks and the discussion quickly moved past my little discovery. Oh well, I think that the locks are great-- maybe it's a guy thing. The paint colours will be nice too and surely will be discussed soon.
