Interesting endeavor to say the least. We have two sets of these in our bedroom. They were originally reddish wood with mirror panels that were this funky 60s style mirror with a dark pattern in it. They were heavy, they kept coming out of the runners on the top. I kept intending to do something about them. We had the house re- carpeted. The #%$* carpet installers didn't do their job right, but I didn't notice at the time. They took the doors down and rehung them when they replaced the carpet. One day a couple of weeks later, one of the doors just falls down. These doors are custom built doors, 93" tall and weigh a ton, so when it fell, the wood broke and a couple of the hinges came off and it was a mess. So I took them all down and stuck them in my son's room (who is away at college) and tried gluing the wood back to together after removing the hinges on the two part door that broke. Discovered my wonderful carpet people had re-installed the bottom brackets, which the doors pivoted on, on top of the carpet. So the doors weight were on a base that wobbled and finally came loose. I decided it was too late to hassle the carpet people. The doors weren't broken when they left. (And life is short) So I looked into getting new doors. $1,000.00 to $1,500.00 and they had to be special ordered. Luckily, we decided this was too expensive, and I would try to repair the ones we had. It turned out, as I started to dismantle the second set, I discovered they were a different width than the first set, so I would have been out half of my new purchase money, because I was ready to order four sets with the dimensions of the broken one. I investigated how doors like these might be put together, Thinking the the mirrors were glued in the wooden frame. I learned all about how you can heat glue with an iron and loosen it, etc. The plan was to glue and sand the broken wood, dismantle the doors and paint the wood and replace the mirrors with rice paper. (Out entire house has shoji screens in all the windows.- Japanese-American family owned it before us that did custom rice paper screens as a family business in LA.) Well, the dismantle was easy. The doors were actually constructed by the family's business (that owned the house). I've been repairing shoji screens in our house for the last twenty years. No glue. The mirrors were just held in place with small wooden sticks tacked in place behind them. So they were dismantled. The mirrors thrown away. More rice paper ordered from the place up in Northern California. Shoji screens, American style at least, are made with a fiberglass paper that is very sturdy. It does makes you sneeze and the fibers make your skin itch like installation will and there is a fiberglass smell at first, but it goes away. It's a paper like thing that can be wiped cleaned with a moist rag if it gets slightly dirty. So. I sand and paint the wood. I don't like the way it looks. The paint was the last of an old can and I had drips and it was not cool. So I sand them all down again and re-paint all of them. The first took three coats- the second time took three coats. I had started before Christmas on this project. We were robbed, the bandits hopped over the doors on the floor of my son's bedroom to steal his Eagle awards and money etc. (They got caught and we got it all back.) I moved the doors to my studio over Christmas where they stayed. Finally finished one set in March and hung them. Finally finished the second set today. I tried to jury rig some the hardware on the second set and it didn't work, so had to start all over and finally after a eight hours got these damn doors up and working. NOW I can get on with my life.
