The Door

For the last month, I have been remodeling my office/den here at the house.  Yesterday, I cut and nailed in place the final lengths of base trim after finishing the floor.  I have posted a photograph (captured with my smarter-than-me-phone) of the north wall in my den.  In the photograph, you can see the first of many pieces of white office furnishings, and the door to my kitchen.

The door is special.

I quite literally built my house around that door.

The door came from my Grandparent’s home on East Pacific Street in East Helena, Montana.  After their passing and the subsequent sale of their home, the gentleman who purchased the house, a man I knew well, bumped into me one day.   “I have something for you, if you want it,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“I saved the door from the Pacific Street side of you grandparent’s house when I remodeled.  It’s unusual.  I couldn’t bring myself to throw it out.”

I thought about all the times I went through that door; the times I studied the light dancing though the glass when I was a young boy.  “Yes, I want it.”

When Uyen (my late wife) and I started penciling rough designs for our new house back in 1990, I placed an arrow pointing to that door at the center of our floor plan.  During construction of my house in 1991, I had a finish carpenter friend of mine (thank you, Bill S.) help me frame a custom opening for the slightly crooked and odd-sized door.  Uyen spent hours carefully refinishing the door.

And now the door has a fancy new wall on one side. 

On a bad day I can close that door and watch the pretty light of my childhood falling though.

On a good day, too.

—Mitchell Hegman