kuhl doors: Custom Entry Door

Along with providing standard designs shown on my kuhldoors website I do custom orders. These take a great deal more time and effort.

First step for a custom order is I like to see the space the stained glass windows and doors are going into. This is a new house being constructed in Northern Michigan. At this stage I do not have the job, I am only making a proposal I hope will be accepted. When I design a window it is very important for me to take into account the background. Notice the trees and that there are no other houses or anything else that needs to be blocked out. This is the grand entrance, an important focal point and I do not want to loose the outside view. Rather I would like to see it incorporated into the window.

Immediately I thought of a design/pattern I've used in the past, tree branches. I used this door as part of my presentation to the potential client. It is a design for a door I've eager to use on a big project like this one.

I start off with sketches in conjunction with the sample panel shown above.

In case the client does not like the idea of the tree branches I like to give different options. This is another strong design I've used many times successfully.

Just to cover my bases I incorporated the two designs. Sometimes people like elements of both.

As I had hoped the client loved the tree branches idea. However, they want to explore different options. They also wanted something to reflect birch trees, a prominent tree here in Northern Michigan. So I explore different options. Here we have one dominant tree.

Another option is to offset the dominant tree.

Dominant tree completely off center.

Spending a lot of time looking at Birch trees I find Birch trees usually are seen in groups. Also, I placed them to the left so you can see the actual trees through the window on the right.