Reclaimed Screened Door

Sitting on a screened-in porch with sweet iced tea is the ideal pastime for any Southerner. Sunday afternoons are a quintessence moment for such relaxation. A local church in Pembroke designed their church building to promote fellowship and adding a screened-in porch seemed essential for the purpose.

The rustic look of the building needed a special kind of door to match the rest of the setting, so one member reclaimed an old sliding door and its rail system to use for the porch. Once a new door was built and hung on the rail, many church members noticed a specific problem with the arrangement. The new door was too heavy to move for most of the children.

The designers went back to the drawing board and back to the same old country house where the door was found.

In the walls of the Shaw House in Wagram, NC, a pulley system was used to help lift the windows. Weights were attached to a rope and the rope ran through a pulley and then attached to the top of the window. When one of the nineteenth century occupants wanted to open the window for a cool breeze, the weights would offset the load of the window so a young southern belle would not have to strain to get some fresh air.

This pulley system was also reclaimed and quickly installed to assist the movement of the screened door. The new design was a success. Kids running through the porch could easily close the door. The action of the rails and the pulleys was smooth, even after decades of sitting idle in a rotting country home.