This month, we sat down with Bill and Harriett Barrett, owners of Southern Doors & Hardware at 1237 Gadsden St, Columbia, SC, to talk about who they are and why everyone should consider updating their doors and home's hardware.
Q: What is Southern Doors & Hardware?
We are a custom door Design, Build & Install company, also offering door and cabinet hardware. We have two locations with our Production Shop in Lugoff and our Hardware Showroom in the Vista Columbia.
Q: How did the business start and why?
The long version is Bill took my stepdad to a shop in Lugoff called The Leprechaun Shop. My stepdad was looking for some nice boards for a project he was doing for his grandchildren. The owner, Richard Layman, built doors there and was known to have extra lumber.
Mr. Layman, the Leprechaun himself, was building the most beautiful doors. He was a true Master Craftsman who needed some help. Bill was working at DuPont at the time but jumped at the chance to work around his schedule to train under Richard’s instruction.
After apprenticing for free for about two years, Bill bought the bulk of the business and Southern Custom Doors was born.
Q: What makes your business truly unique?
We’re a custom shop and that, in itself, is very unique. We can do almost any kind of entry. Bill is the person who, when someone else tells our customers “No, we can’t do this,” he says “Yes we can.”
All of us here are passionate about what we do. We love our projects and if you notice on our website we name them after our customers. No one is a number to us. We also put a penny in our wood doors. It makes us truly unique.
Q: What would surprise most people to learn about you or your business?
We use old-school techniques to build our doors. We’re not a high-tech company. Our staff are skilled at solving problems and when you are working on replacing entries in homes, that is a skill that is priceless.
Q: What is your favorite thing about your job?
I love to see the pride we all feel in our products and making our customers happy.
Q: Why should people consider updating their doors and hardware?
Whether for a stylistic or functional change, changing doors or hardware adds value to any home. Your entry welcomes everyone to your home and gives them a hint of what style they will find inside. We call door hardware “the jewelry for the door” and, like cabinet hardware, it should reflect the owner’s personal style.
Q: Anything you’d like to add?
We have doors throughout this country, including the Hamptons, Washington State, California and more. We have worked on historic renovations and special projects such as Drayton Hall, Charleston Visitors Center and the South Carolina State House. We are also fortunate to be able to work with many churches throughout the state to create beautiful new entries for them.