La Puerta Originals

Wow. I can't understand why the previous poster had so many complaints about this wonderful company. The woman who owned our house before we bought it used La Puerta to install gorgeous antique doors and lintels throughout our house, gates outside, as well as kitchen cabinetry and a double sink vanity, custom jewelry cabinet, and makeup vanity area. Everything La Puerta did convinced us to buy the house. The workmanship is beautiful, the materials they sourced are unique and special, and they are primarily what give the house its old world character and charm. So let me talk about our own experiences working with La Puerta to add items to the house since we bought it. Our first experience was having them create beam wraps with old wood for our kitchen. Unlike in the rest of the house, where the beams were old wood, in the kitchen the beams were thin, small, and new looking. The beam wraps that La Puerta made are gorgeous, and we worked with them to specifically design the heft, color, and character of the beam wraps to be consistent with the rest of the house. The owner of the company, Scott, made several trips out to the house to make sure he understood exactly what we wanted and had all of the measurements correct. I would say it is a little bit unfortunate that La Puerta is not affiliated with a contractor for installation, which means that the installation is not included in pricing, and the quality/experience of the installation is not controlled by La Puerta. Fortunately, we have a good contractor and have never had any issues with the installation process. We also used La Puerta to help us to modify several antique Spanish tables - one became a base for a vanity in our casita bath, and the other is a desk for my husband. Their work is excellent, and you would not be able to tell that the piece had been modified in any way (in both cases we raised the height by modifying the legs/feet, and added a shelf for the vanity piece). They are truly experts at carving, staining, and repairing antique pieces to maintain their original character. Another project La Puerta has helped us with is the creation of custom counter tops using old wood. We had built-in cabinets in our family room and casita that were obviously created in the 90s when televisions were small cubes rather than large flat screens. We ended up removing the upper cabinets and needed a countertop to finish off the lower cabinetry. We went to La Puerta and got to tour the "boneyard" to select the specific old wood we wanted to use for this purpose. Since the timelines for these projects depended on our contractor's availability (along with subs for repairing plaster, moving wiring, etc.), I worked with Scott to get dimensions (again, he came to the house to be sure the dimensions were correct) and pick out the finish to make sure the wood was resealed and would not give anyone splinters while still retaining the reclaimed, old wood look. By giving them notice of what we needed and having all the plans in place in advance, La Puerta was able to produce our countertops in the space of a couple weeks to coincide with the timeline for our contractor and the carpenters who would install them. We are delighted with these countertops - stone countertops would have been beautiful, but would have been a much more modern finished look and not what we were shooting for. I may need a separate post to talk about additional work La Puerta has done for us, but I want to conclude by saying that everyone I have worked with here has been terrific - Scott and his wife Melissa are great at communicating with clients, Ethan is a fabulous project manager, and the craftsmen are top notch. When we have needed to make changes they have always been accommodating and often done so on their own dime. La Puerta is expensive, but you get what you pay for, and this is Santa Fe. I hope to continue to work with them on any future projects we need at the house.