Antique double door (a.k.a. pintu kupu tarung)

At that time we understood very well that we wanted to have antique double door (pintu kupu tarung) in our Naim Project. We believed that the antique door will give a rustic feeling to exterior of the house. Based on our 'research', the colonial-style building used wooden double door painted in white/cream/yellow with NO (or very minimum) hand-carved ornaments. So, we looked for a set of antique double door that had simple yet unique design.

Before

The original condition

And the size was just right!

We believe that the antique double door has added different character to the house. The door is actually an access to the innercourt.

After

Stair railing

The inspiration

We observed that many colonial buildings had the stair/balcony railing decorated by a set of steel bars with classic ornaments in the middle (Note: the ornament is made from tin, instead of steel). In Semarang's Kota Lama area, we noticed that such evidence is everywhere. Once we saw the distinctive colonial design for railing, we immediately agreed to bring the idea to our Naim Project.
We were then advised by our contractor that if we asked the wrought iron worker to 'copy' the design, we will not get the same details as those of the original ones (not even close!). I was not sure the reason for not being able to reproduce the colonial design for stair railing, but I suspect that the wrought iron worker will have difficulty to make the special 'mould' for making the requested design.
It was best if we just got the antique or dismatled steel railing from old houses.
So the hunt was started quite early to find the antique steel bars.

The raw material

And luckily we can get the antique steel bars which were once attached to staircase of someone's house:) They may look 'ugly' and raw, but once we saw them on the antique dealers, we felt assured that our staircase will turned out to be as classic as the original colonial buildings.

Classic colonial-style staircase, but the steel bars could not be dismantled
as the staircase was sold in 'as is' condition :p

It was 'ready stock'!! Meaning that the steel bars were already dismantled
from the old staircase.

The result
The final result is classic and beautiful staircase in our family house.....

In total we used almost 100 pieces of antique steel bars......