BECKFOOT DOOR ATELIER · BECKFOOT VALE & THORNBURY HOLLOW · ONE BENCH, TWO JOINERS
A garage door should be the best-made object on the outside of a house — and wood, chosen well and joined honestly, outlives the person who hung it.
What we do
What leaves the bench
Western red cedar & coastal redwood
The classic carriage-house woods: quarter-sawn for stability, light enough that a matched spring pair barely notices the door is wood. Cedar shrugs off the Vale’s rain unsealed for its first five years and ages from honey to silver exactly the way the Hollow’s oldest doors already have. Doors from $5,400, drawn to the opening.
Sapele & African mahogany, book-matched
For the houses that want the door to read as furniture: ribbon-striped sapele book-matched across the sections so the grain runs continuously over the whole face, sealed in marine varnish, finished dark enough that the strap hinges disappear into it. The densest wood we hang — springs wound to the weighed pound, always, and a 50,000-cycle pair standard. From $7,900.
Restoration — your 1927 door, re-hung
The Hollow is full of beautiful doors hanging on exhausted guts. We strip them to the joinery, re-glue every mortise, replace the odd shattered panel from matched stock, and re-hang the whole thing on modern track with a torsion pair sized to its honest aged weight — the face untouched, the physics brand new. From $1,850, bench time included.
Drawn, built and hung — 2026 bench rates
The species card
Every price is the whole commission: the drawing you approve, the acclimation fortnight, the hang, and the first oiling twelve months later, on us.
Cedar carriage door, drawn & hungfrom $5,400
Quarter-sawn western red cedar · mortise-and-tenon rails · insulated core behind real board
Sapele book-matched, drawn & hungfrom $7,900
Ribbon grain run continuously · marine varnish · 50,000-cycle pair standard
Douglas fir & European larch, drawn & hungfrom $4,700
The valley’s own character woods · oiled finish, renewed every few years
Restoration & re-hang, your doorfrom $1,850
Joinery re-glued, panels matched, modern track under the old face
The drawing alone$240, credited
Your elevation rendered with the door on it · yours to keep whoever hangs it
First-year oiling visitincluded
Cedar and fir both drink in year one · we bring the oil, the cloths and the ladder
A wood door is an engineered door
The board you admire is a skin over a machine: a stile-and-rail frame carrying the loads, a bonded insulated core holding the assembly near R-12 while the wood holds the weather, and floating panel details that let each board move with the seasons instead of splitting to prove a point. Beauty is the surface of the engineering, never a substitute for it.
The fortnight in your garage
A finished Beckfoot door does not go from the bench to the opening — it goes to your garage first, for two weeks, taking on the humidity of the air it will breathe for thirty years. Wood that hangs before it settles is wood that binds in its first February; the fortnight is the cheapest insurance in the whole commission.
Hardware drawn with the door
Forged straps, drop handles and hinge stamps come from one foundry and appear on the drawing beside the wood they will ride on — because hardware chosen after the fact is how a door ends up wearing jewellery that does not match. Springs are matched to the built door’s weighed pounds and wound to the cycle rating its life deserves.
Drawing to first oiling
How a commission runs
Eleven commissions a season, each through the same six movements — the only variable is the species and how stubborn the house is.
The measure & the daylight match
Opening, headroom and side room to the sixteenth — then a colour match taken against your trim in daylight, because a finish approved under shop lights is a finish argued with all spring.
The drawing
Your elevation photographed, the door rendered onto it, hardware and finish scheduled beside. You approve a picture of your own house, not a brochure page — and the drawing is yours either way.
The build, at the bench
Rails and stiles cut from the drawing, panels raised, joinery assembled and glued, two coats of primer and colour in the shop. You receive dry-fit photographs while changes are still cheap.
The acclimation fortnight
The finished door lives in your garage for two weeks before the hang, taking on the air it will breathe for thirty years. The one deadline we refuse to compress.
The hang & the balance test
Springs wound to the built door’s weighed pounds, hardware landing where the drawing puts it, then the opener off and the door to waist height: it holds, you watch, you sign, and the twenty-five-year joinery warranty starts.
Twelve months on — the oiling
Cedar and fir drink in their first year and we come back with the oil, unbidden, because a door maintained from new never needs restoring by us or anyone else.
Commissions & restorations
From the bench, this decade
Six doors the Hollow has already formed an opinion about — photographed at handover with nothing styled and nobody home.
The drawing is the contract
Species, sections, finish, hardware, spring pair — one drawing, signed twice, attached to the invoice. If the door that hangs in your opening differs from that drawing in any particular, the difference is ours to make right at our cost, including the year of oiling that follows.
Why the atelier is small on purpose
Two joiners, eleven doors, one bench
Marchand and Verhoeven could run three benches and forty doors a season; the Hollow keeps asking, and the answer stays no. A wood door is made of decisions that cannot be delegated — which board faces the weather, where the grain turns, which mortise wants a deeper shoulder — and every one of them is made better by the same two people who will hang the result. Eleven commissions is what two honest pairs of hands draw, build, acclimate, hang and oil in a Vale year. The list opens in October and closes when it closes.
Twenty-two seasons at the same bench
The bench, in figures
They drew our door onto a photograph of the house and the drawing alone was worth the fee — the conservation officer approved it in a week, and the door that hangs there now is the door on that paper down to the forged straps. When the balance test held at waist height I understood I had bought thirty years, not a weekend.
Our 1931 door was the prettiest thing on the street and the most dangerous — a two-person lift with the opener disengaged. They re-glued every joint, kept every panel, and hung it on track and springs sized to what the door actually weighs now. It lifts with two fingers and looks untouched from the curb.
The sapele was their idea and the correct one — the grain runs over the whole face like the door was cut from one board. The neighbors assumed it was original to the 1920s house. It was hung on a wet Thursday and oiled, unasked, the following spring.
I asked for a quote and received instead a drawing of my own house with the door rendered onto it, and a note saying the drawing was mine whatever I decided. Eleven weeks later the cedar was hanging — acclimated a fortnight in the very garage it now closes — and the two joiners who drew it were the two who wound its springs. My grandfather was a cabinetmaker and would have recognised every tool on their bench. He would also have recognised the price as fair, which is the part I tell people.
Before the list opens
Questions asked at the bench
The five every commission begins with. Anything stranger, the bench answers between eight and six, or bench@beckfootatelier.example any hour at all.
Wood in a garage — honestly, why not steel?
Because a wood door is the only one that improves with age. Steel is perfect on the day it hangs and declining ever after; cedar goes from honey to silver, fir deepens, sapele darkens like furniture. You take on an oiling every few years and you get a door the house grows into instead of out of — the trade is honest both ways.
Which species is right for my house?
Match the house’s era and its weather. Cedar for anything shingled or coastal-adjacent — it forgives rain. Sapele and mahogany for brick and stone, where dark mass reads as original. Douglas fir and larch for barns, valleys and modern timber — the character woods, oiled not varnished. Bring a photo of the elevation; the answer usually takes minutes.
What maintenance does a wood door actually need?
An oiling every two to four years by species and aspect — fifteen minutes a side with a cloth — and the hardware wipe that comes with it. Varnished doors go five to seven. The first-year visit is ours because doors that drink early drink evenly, and even drinking is what keeps a face flat for decades.
Can you match a wood door from the 1920s?
Usually panel for panel, and where the profile is gone we match the nearest cut and blend the finish to the weathered neighbours from a daylight sample. For full restorations we re-hang the original face on modern track and torsion springs sized to its current weighed pounds — the look of the decade, the physics of this one.
Why does the door sit in my garage for two weeks?
Acclimation: wood takes on the moisture of the air it will live in, and a door hung before that movement finishes is a door that binds in February. Every shop that skips it is selling you a warp with a delivery date. The fortnight is non-negotiable and has been since 2004.
The drawing list opens each October and holds eleven names · (555) 039-6612 · bench@beckfootatelier.example · the drawing is yours whoever hangs the door
Start with the drawing
Send a photograph of the house and the rough opening. The drawing that comes back is rendered onto your own elevation, priced to the species, and yours to keep whoever hangs the door. bench@beckfootatelier.example