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    His “clients” have been known to bring in a photograph or sketch (or just a vision in their head) and say to him:
    “Here's the door we want to build our house around.”
    For artisan door-maker Tom Baer of Doors & More in Paso Robles, who specializes in stained glass work, “the front door is where everything starts and ends, where everything happens.” And he does his best to bring the customer's vision to life—with a few exceptions.
    “No hummingbirds, dolphins or angels,” he says. “Forget it.”
    He usually selects the wood for his doors from an enormous cache he keeps in a warehouse in Michigan . (He came across this prime stash of hardwoods, like flawless old white oak, while bored “almost to death” on a road trip-but that's another story.) Sometimes, too, he “finds” a ***door in planks of wood that (HAVE BEEN) “has been “kicking around my shop for 10 years,” he says. “I just hadn't found a home for it yet.”
    The doors can be expensive, and his mostly word-of-mouth clients tend to be, well, comfortable. But he won't make just everyone a door—especially if the customer can't appreciate the beauty of it. And, too, he's been known to barter if the connection is strong, as in the case of a retired steam locomotive engineer who somehow ***found (THE) his way to his shop. Baer has a serious passion for steam trains (as well as wine-making, motorcycle riding, music and cribbage).
    “When I told him the price for what he wanted, he starting walking out the door. So I said to him, ‘hey, what do you do for a living? What do you have to trade?' ” To make a very long story short, Baer, for the door, accepted a shovel the engineer had used for years to fuel the train's engine with coal. And he got the best of the deal, he says.
    He's been working out of the Paso location for five years, but he comes from a long line of contractors and artisans--his artist-mother taught him to make leaded glass as a youngster.
    Baer, too, owns his own construction business that supports 11 employees, but making doors are his passion. The more basic models, including installation and molding, run from about $2,500 to $5,000 and usually ***take from six to 10 weeks to delivery (DELIVER). A recent, more grandiose endeavor included an entryway with three matching doors and intricate stained-glass embellishment that cost more than $20,000. He's also taken on such projects as a winding staircases and a large-scale installation of a hardwood floor. Currently, he's refurbishing an old, massive fireplace mantle.
    Before accepting a client and agreeing on a design, Baer says he usually “requires a peek” at the customer's house to get a better sense of its style.
    The finished product more often than not ends up being a collaboration, Baer says, with clients “imposing their feelings” on him and then trusting his experience and artistic inclinations.
    Baer's excitement over the recent completion of an oversized door, made from nearly flawless old, white oak from his warehouse, was practically palatable. The last step was to install a stained-glass panel of his design—a spreading oak tree set against a rural Central Coast landscape. Halfway through the process, he decided the green used for the oak was off and changed the color-slightly.
    In the end, it met his approval and got raves when he personally installed it at the customer's home.
    “She was, shall we say, teary-eyed,” Baer reported.