On Friday, a friend mentioned that another friend of his had brought in six hand-carved front doors from Africa. Now, this individual is not in construction, or sales, or anything related to exterior doors. He was living in Africa, fell in love with their hand-carved doors, decided to buy six of them, and shipped them all the way to our little Caribbean island. Now his wife is "asking him" to sell them (giggle here gals). The doors were unloaded this week and he is storing them in a home destroyed by Hurricane Ivan...only because he has no other space large enough for them. Needless to say, when we heard the above story, we simply had to see these doors.
We turned a corner and there sat six enormous, beautifully carved, African mahagony doors. Wow. Each one had a different motif, almost if they each had their own story to tell and were luring you through their doors to hear more. We both were speechless. The time and effort that went into making these beauties set against the abandoned home was almost startling.
I quickly lured our builder and a carpenter out to the site to see if any could be a possibility for the house. Both gasped when the saw them. I expected that they would immediately tell us that the doors would be too large a project; to my surprise and delight, they were absolutely committed to finding a way to make the work. This included changing the arch that currently is in place for our original door selection.
The only lingering doubt is whether they really match the exterior design of the house. It was originally set to be Mediterranean and we had selected the door below, which is stunning in an entirely different way.
The African doors will probably cost a bit less than our original selection. I've posted images (slightly old...sorry) of the front of the house, but now we need your help. Should we stay strictly to the exterior design of the house or should we risk it for the hand-carved option? (Needless to say, I love that we are in this dilemma!)
