TruStile Factory Tour
About a year ago, a noteworthy set of interior French doors were quietly installed in the Banwell office conference room. They have frames made of LVL, which, as anyone who has worked in wood construction knows, is an industrially manufactured, structural wood product made from many thin slices of veneer each approximately 1/8” thick. When glued together, these stacks of veneer become full depth beams that can be quite strong but are rarely visible once a building is complete.
Instead of hiding this manufactured wood product, the doors to our conference room showcase the unique aesthetic quality imparted by the LVL. The doors are a statement piece that are hard to ignore. They are modern while being natural. They are very heavy. They are my favorite part of our office.
Fast forward to this Fall and enter TruStile doors. Sometime around the middle of this past August, I received an email invitation from Windows and Doors by Brownell, our local Marvin and TruStile dealer located in West Lebanon NH, to tour the TruStile door factory in Denver Colorado. Putting two and two together I realized that our conference room doors are a TruStile product. I jumped at the opportunity to see how these doors are made and learn more about the myriad of other door products they offer. Also: an invitation to travel to sunny Colorado for the better half of a week is no small perk!
The TruStile door factory is a true marvel. Automated machines, orderly stacks of components awaiting assembly, databases of orders and materials, and a skilled workforce were all beyond impressive.
As fascinating as the manufacture of the doors was to see, the real impact on my work as an Architect here at Banwell, was to reinforce the impression our new LVL conference room doors had already made on me: That interior doors can play an integral role in design. They can affect both the usability of a space and reinforce or elevate the stylistic direction sought by a client and designer. I will be looking for a project soon to deploy my newfound and heightened sense of potential afforded by the specification of the humble interior door!
Thanks, TruStile and Marvin Windows and Doors for the great trip and for showing me what’s possible.
