Guess what!  Our antique pantry doors are hung.  It’s truly something that I absolutely could not wait for from the moment we bought them.  If you remember, we drove to Tennessee for 6 1/2 hours to pick up these beauties.  Ever since we brought them home, they have been sitting in our garage here at the cottage waiting to be installed.  Every time I opened the garage door, I noticed their beauty.  Today, I actually found the messages from the seller on Facebook Marketplace and found out some more information on them that I overlooked previously.

Our Antique Pantry Doors are Hung

Recap:  I sent out a message in our newsletter (sign up here) asking people if they knew of 4 matching antique doors for our two pantries.  Several people told us that we would NEVER find four matching doors.  I received an email from a girl with the link to a Facebook Marketplace post.  The post was for two gorgeous doors in an antique mall in Chattanooga, Tennessee.  I messaged her to see if, by chance, there were two more.  She said there were only two.

I received a message ten days later from the antique store owner stating that the owner of the doors said he actually had two more at home.  And that he would make me a great deal.  So, we planned to go pick them up the following week.  Two days before we planned on leaving to pick up our pantry doors, we were to get 19″ of snow. So we had to wait another week.

When we got there, these doors were clear in the back of the antique store and weighed a million pounds.  There was a sign on the doors that said they were the auditorium entryway doors of the Highland Park Baptist Church in Chattanooga, TN.  The church was built in 1896.  The owner had them marked $595 each.  But, said he would sell them all to us for $1,200.

They have the hinges that swing both ways.. in and out.  Which made sense since they were for an auditorium.  While our trimmers were hanging them, they figured out that if they moved a pin in the hinges, they could loosen up the tension or remove the tension all together.  It really worked out because again, these doors are heavy.  We knew the original hinges would hold them and didn’t think the newer ones would.

I just did a quick google search of this church.  It appears that it may have burned down in June of this year. (2022)  And that the fire was intentionally set.  How sad is that?  If you know the details for sure, let me know by commenting on this post.  Or you can always email me. 

UPDATE:  I just received this photo via email.  The sender found this photo online when she did a search of the church.  These most certainly look like our pantry doors.  

NOTE:  I do not know who the original person is who posted this old photo online.  If I find out, I can give them credit.  

We added new brass handles to the original brass plates of these doors which I shared over on another post.  And I love how those turned out.

Another detail of the trip….

 I don’t think I ever told you about another detail of our trip to Tennessee to pick up these doors.  On the way home, I was scouring the Facebook Marketplace for other antique doors, mantels, and store counters.  We needed several more items for the new house.  Well, a 12′ antique store counter popped up in my search.  It was 6 1/2 – 7 hours in Illinois, the opposite direction.  We loved the look of it.  But, I put it out of my mind for a month or two because we just spent 14 hours in a truck. And we were over it.

That post for the 12′ store counter popped back up a few months later.  Well, I think you all know what we did.  See that store counter here.  We brought it home and gave it a makeover… and then made a checklist of things we wanted to do to it to make it more functional and pretty on the inside.

What’s next for the pantry doors?

I am going to wallpaper the pantry hopefully in the next few days.  Because I want that done before the guys come and add the shelves to them.  Also, we added some window film to each window and it turned out terrible.  But, we are wondering if we hung it backwards.  That has to be dealt with, too.

I absolutely love the details of our pantry doors.  The panels are all trimmed out just perfectly.  And since they were swinging doors, all of that beauty is just as pretty on the inside as the outside.  

What do you think?