 The best kind of doors are the doors you have to explain. Welcome, welcome to Unhinged with the door dork where door hardware nerds get together to knock and slam on different door fills. We laugh, we cry. Sometimes we even learn something if we're having a good day, right? Today we do have a very special guest, Mr. Daniel Gills of OG Door Hardware Nerd. I have to say, right? Like he's been on the show before, but not on Unhinged. So it's really good to have you here. Daniel, why don't you hop on and tell us a little bit about yourself, what you do. And we'll be back. Happy to be here. Thanks for having me, big fan of the show and have seen it kind of come from the inception to what you guys have built it to now. But I've been in the door hardware business going on 13 years, June 1st to mark 13 years. June 1, 2010, I jumped in with Medeco, spent roughly 12 years with ASA Abloy. And now I am the vice president of business development for Himmels Architectural Door and Hardware. We've got four locations throughout the Southeast and we do everything from new construction to aftermarket service and sales. So I've been a big fan and have seen a couple things in the wild that have made me become unhinged in this industry as well. Really good to have you on the show. Thanks again for joining us and looking forward to seeing your insights on some of these door hardware fails. So why don't you go ahead and share a fun fact about yourself if you don't mind? My fun fact has been the same. I've shared this before, but it can't escape me is the first ever conversation I had with my wife was about wood door lead times. That was in 2014 and lead times I think are still the same right now. Consistency, consistency is key. Nothing but consistent. Now thankfully they're improving, but yeah, the literal first ever conversation was about wood door lead times. It's kind of nerdy and sad and just shows that I'm married to this business, I guess. Wait, so your wife has been in the industry as well? Yeah, she works for General Contractor. In the first conversation we met, she said, hey, you talk about who you are, where you're from, what you do. And my joke was always, you know, I sell doorknobs and she instantly replied back, commercial or residential. And you never get that far with people. So I was like, whoa, commercial. She's like, who do you work for? And I went on the story about Asa Abloy and this, that, the other. And just so happened, she was managing a project at a hospital here in town where Asa Abloy product was specified and they were having issues getting, at the time it was Graham, wood doors. So that's how it all unfolded. That's funny, that's really funny. Got grilled on day one. Yeah. But you passed the test. Nice to meet you. Passed the test and here we are. Now she looks at doors in the wild as well. Married to the game. That is key. Well, welcome. Good to have you. Mia, why don't you hop on and say hello and share a little fun fact about yourself as well. Yeah, hello. It's so good to see Daniel. Daniel and I used to work on the same team. And so I have missed him since he has been gone but so happy for him as he moves through his career path. So we're all cheering for Daniel but we do miss him terribly. So I'm just really happy to see his face today. Still hanging out supporting you guys. So it's fun to be here. My fun fact, we'll go with how we met our spouses. My husband and I, back in the day, we've been married for almost, I think this fall will be 14 years. We met online on a dating website. And I flew down ahead of a hurricane to meet him. He was a Marine, which I had shared on our previous episode, maybe two episodes ago. But I flew down to meet him by myself ahead of a hurricane and all my friends were questioning my sanity. But now married for so long, have two kids, live in the dream. Good for you. A trailblazer on the online dating, early adopter. Yeah, early adopter, yes. And you know, you had that hurricane on the horizon. So like there was some urgency to the relationship, you know, it was meant to be. It was, it was. So, yeah, that's it, Benji. I guess we're sharing stories about how we met our spouse. Definitely no door hardware involved in my story. So I know I've shared a fun fact that I used to ballroom dance. It was actually my major in college. I went to college for ballroom dancing. And part of my scholarship was I had to help teach some of the beginning ballroom classes. And you know, my wife was taking the class at the time with her boyfriend. She was new to the college. She had transferred universities and didn't really know anyone. She thought she'd join a dance class to, you know, get to know and meet people. And so she decided to take a beginning ballroom class. And I happened to be teaching that ballroom class. So long story short, I didn't break any policies or procedures or anything like that. But halfway through the semester, they broke up with enough time for everything to pass. And after I graded their final, we started hanging out shortly after that. So literally swept her off her feet, I guess you could say. But no, it was a fun semester to be say. The guy that she was taking the class did not like me very much. And I think I know why. So as a professor, you weren't getting apples or any treats coming from him trying to impress the teacher, right? No, no. And it was very awkward. By the end of the semester, I mean, I had to grade his final. Like I had to grade his dancing. And he was an excellent dancer. And so I gave him like solid scores, but handing him his like grade was just like death stare. I'm like, okay, sorry. At least she gave my praise. Yes, yeah. I think most people would be happy to know that they have good dance moves. Yes. I was not biased by any means. At least unconsciously, maybe I was. But yeah, I don't know if that was a fun story or not. It sounds like the plot of a Hallmark Channel movie. Hallmark should call you and make a movie on this. I would watch it on the next episode of DoorDorks. Good times. That was good. So for those who don't know how Unhinge works, I will share my screen. I'll show three different door install fails, code violations, disasters, just interesting or intriguing or even just funny door hardware applications. We will knock and slam on the door. We'll give little helpful hints and comments. And then we'll give it a knocking score. One being not too knocking bad and 10 being this is not right. Let's get the fire marshal in here. Let's fix this. Let's call some people to take care of it, right? Let's get Daniel's company in there to fix some installation issues here. How does that sound? Are you guys ready? Well, let's jump in, man, I'm ready. Now I'm nervous. Oh boy. Oh no. Have you guys seen that Spider-Man GIF where there's three Spider-Man standing in a circle pointing at one another? Right there. They designed this one. What do we do? I guess you're just stuck here. You just can't get out. Pull the fire alarm. Somebody will come and help you out, right? Not sure how you're gonna exit in case of an emergency. I've always wondered what the codes are on these revolving doors. I know by code they're required to have other egress sections available for people to panic out the building. But I'm wondering like technically, do they have to have that pedestrian swinging door there for egress? Or is it not required because they have the exterior doors and they just use that for ease of flow and traffic? I think we need to call in code corner with Katie on that one. Did it? Well, I need a phone a friend or get a lifeline there. I'm not sure. I'm sure there's definitely code implications for it. But I guess generally speaking when you see types of vestibule setups or revolving doors like that, you will often see a normal freestanding swinging door that'll give you that free path of egress as well. It's good to see they have panic hardware. Most kids today entering the industry will not even know what that thing is. I'm sure that the industry vets will tell you experiences about trying to source parts or install those, but crossbar exits, that is a thing of the past. Yeah, you don't see that every day for sure. I remember years ago when I was working for a factory, we had a hard time manufacturing those. Really? Parts are not easy, the tooling is old and you don't sell a ton of them either. I would imagine it's almost like you sell them to like historical movie sets or something like that or just like people needing hardware that looks older for a reason or aesthetics. Yeah, religious facilities you'll find a lot of our business actually in Louisiana and New Orleans specifically, you have that historical architecture design they wanna keep and preserve. It's a purely aesthetic choice to have a crossbar and by the way the vestibule is wood, it plays in well with the design choices that they've made here. I think the vestibule in my gut tells me the requirement for egress in an emergency situation would be to have a free swinging door because you're not gonna get the volume of people out of vestibule in an emergency situation that you would get out of just a regular swinging door. And I don't think, yes, they have a sign there but I don't think anything is wrong. This doesn't look like they've, first of all, they're not blocking that swinging door. It doesn't look like it's, I mean, it could be locked but it's probably not locked so other than the signage being there you can probably egress out of it. Yeah, the revolving door I think in the case of emergency could get really dangerous, really fast. Like people just getting stuck, literally stuck in between as people are trying to shove out there. So I almost feel like there has to be, I don't know, almost like an elevator, right? Like in the case of a fire, not supposed to use an elevator, right? So I almost feel like there should be something set up in a way where that like disables that but even then that's like you're causing buildup or, yeah. I think that's more modern designs. You're seeing, you know, high energy sliders that have doors in case of emergency that you can egress through and push through. So push through them. Yeah, the breakaway sliders, right? Benji, is this in Connecticut? Have you been here before? Does this look familiar? It reminds me of like downtown New Haven some of the restaurants there. Looks like that leads out of a hotel into a restaurant, maybe? I don't know. Yeah, I'm not sure where Scott took this picture from, so. You can see them in the reflection. So we'll wait for them. Yeah, hey, Scott. No, it kind of has like that old New England historical hotel feel, right? Like it almost feels like that. It does. Yeah, I'm with you Mia. I feel like that actual exit door should be functional and it's cropped out of the photo but I'm guessing there's an exit sign above that because the other sign is saying exit through that side door. Is that like a surface bolt in the top? Up there? Nope, nope. No, in the, yeah. Yeah, good eye, good eye. That does look like a surface bolt. I'm guessing that's a thing. That is not code compliant. That's a quick way to end up in the principal's office. Yeah, no good eye there. That's probably how they keep this door locked. Hopefully not while it's occupied, right? But I think that sign's doing the job right there as well. It's gonna be hard to shove that sign through. That's a deterrent for sure. Okay, just something that caught my eye and I thought was a little funny. I'm probably not too knocking bad but if we wanted to give it a knocking score, what do you think, Daniel? Ooh, it's not the worst, it's not the best. I hate to be middle of the road. I'm gonna give it a 5.5. 5.5, ooh, there's respect for decimal points there. I like that. I'm getting scientific with it, Benji. I got a method. I feel like this is fairly low for me. I am sort of like a four maybe. Could be goaded into the threes. I think the egress, the emergency access is good. So that's the thing that I'm most worried about. Okay, I'm gonna actually give this a six, a little bit higher, a little bit higher. And only for this one reason, path of egress should definitely not be confusing in any way or another. And having just that signage alone on a egress door on an exit door, that right there is breaking code. So I would say that sign needs to be removed because not only is this whole situation just confusing, you know, the Spider-Man pointing at each other, like, oh, which one do I go out? You don't wanna have any kind of confusion and that signage is not properly. So yeah, that's why I'm giving it a little bit higher. I'm going against the grain. Normally I'm like right with you guys, but I guess you did a 5.5. I was gonna say, you're pretty close to Daniel. Perspective, I like it. Okay, are you ready for the next one? What we got? If you wanna be featured on a future episode of Unhinged or if you have a picture to submit, you can email me at Mia at doorhardwinners.com or leave a comment down below.