Thank-you. You are very kind. As stated, the original interior doors (French) were found in the garage when we bought the house. They had been replaced with a single hollow-core (!) door with the sides filled out by 2 x 4 framing and pine. Boy, did the cold air poor in! The original exterior (storm/screen) doors were long gone. We can see that they were there though by the framing and hardware marks. Of interest was that it appeared that one of them was much larger than the other, i.e. not equal in width. Despite all our research, we could never find one example of such a set-up and would refer to fellow readers for a possible explanation? Having nothing to go by design-wise for the exterior doors we turned to Vintage Woodworks and TouchStone. But we never found a design that seemed quite right. Then we hit upon the drawing below during one of many marathon Google Image searches. It was perfect, but we'd have to make it ourselves if we wanted it, and turn it into 2 French doors. This we did. We only did okay with the design however, -in retrospect the bottom raised panel is a little too big and sometimes looks to me more like a barnyard door from Mr. Ed! So the interior doors are original, and the exterior storm/screen doors are our own reproductions. More fun: We bought our house almost exactly 10 years ago today, on 11/22/02. It is 8000sf. That first winter we used 6103 gallons of heating oil. The house was turned into a boarding house in the 60's and was on the verge of being condemned. Of course, heating oil was about $1.10 a gallon then! Last year we used 2084 gallons, though it was a very mild winter (the previous year was 2839 gallons). So, we've saved a great deal of oil, but not very much money! The irony... We re-did all 72 sashes, added exterior storms, caulked leaks, replaced the boiler, tore out the baseboard and put back the radiators, and now the doors are sealed.

Yes, the closing mechanism is in the top and bottom hinges, some kind of spring, I believe. I think I've figured out how to tighten the springs which pulls the door closed. I used an Allen wrench and turned the pin clockwise a couple of ratchets.

We live in a sever fire zone in the Southern Sierras I have a complete household inventory on zip drives. We update regularly and I do take pictures of every open drawer, cabinet nook and cranny in the house, garage and out buildings. Even with a high deductable I wouldn’t anticipate any problem getting the full value of our content insurance. According to our insurance agent pictures are a great tool along with any documentation. My DD has a copy as does my DGS plus the pictures are on my iPad. A few years ago I made some phone calls and found out I could get copies of purchase history from places like Costco and such, I can go back years on my ordered from Amazon, the same for eBay and I can get copies of back visa bills for I think 5 years. We put everything possible on the Visa card. I keep any important recipes in a safe we have in our grandson’s home out of state along with our personal papers and original trusts I keep copy’s here at home. We have been evacuated several times in the last 30 years we have been very lucky but we know people who last everything and the fireproof safes they had were mostly gone the ones that were intact only has ash inside. I know one person that her insurance company made her list everything with date purchased and cost. I spoke to our State Farm agent and he said some times they will do that and sometimes not. One time a water dropping helicopter came down so close to our house it shook it badly enough to break a water pipe. Our insurance paid for an 11 day stay at the Marriott while everything was fixed the only issue we had was the Marriott was 60 miles down the mountain. All we can do is keep everything cleared around the house, have an evacuation plan and make sure we have everything possible on our insurance policy to cover us. Make sure you have building code upgrades and demolition some policies don’t automatically include them. A safe deposit box in a vault at a bank is great if your bank is not in the fire zone plus anything you have in the box is not insured by the bank and may or may not be covered with your home owners insurance.

Does the Chambers have a backguard? Could you do a bit of a bump out if not? Or, what about a patinated or a bit swirled copper piece behind the range top, color matched to the Chambers? That would be a similar material instead of another surface. If you are going to do stainless counters, they also needn’t be the smooth shiny. They can be machine marked with subtle swirls or brushes to not show the water spots or steam condensation. Honestly, if you are the type to wipe off the faucet every time, you are the type to wipe off the backsplash too. No matter what material it might be. Another spritz of Windex and 70 seconds of wiping on a brushed copper or stainless surface is not going to be a major addition to your workload when you are already wiping down everything. And the brushing will hide any streaks so that it doesn’t take you 10 minutes of wiping just right.