When people need glass doors to automatically swing open onto a gorgeous Pacific Northwest lake view, they turn to two experts to bring it to life.
Longtime friends Darren Kiesler (’05 Arch.) and Boone Helm (’03 Comm.) run the Big Door Company, which installs and automates large door systems throughout the western United States and British Columbia.
Kiesler founded the company in 2017 and Helm joined a few years later to handle marketing.
The pair met at Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity at WSU in the early 2000s but remained close friends. Kiesler had been working on large construction projects on the East Coast, especially on doors and windows, before moving back to Seattle.
Helm and Kiesler often talked about working together, even as students. It came about many years later with big doors.
“I pitched this idea to Boone: You bring marketing to the table and I bring construction to the table. There was never a question of it not working,” Kiesler says.
“Big” is not an overstatement. The company installs some jaw-dropping windows and doors.
“We did a project in Canada that had 20-foot-tall, automated doors on a private residence. Another project out by Wallowa Lake had steel-frame windows, just massively architecturally striking, right on the lake,” Kiesler says.
Adds Helm: “These landscapes really lend themselves to big projects.”
To complete them, the company invests in custom equipment—like giant suction cups on cranes—to move 1,000- to 3,000-pound windows and doors, often up steep slopes. “Honestly, 50 percent of the job is just getting these things to the location,” Kiesler says.
Helm loves how people dream big. “‘Why can’t my stairs drop down from the ceiling?’ It’s kind of like we’re creating Batcaves.”
But Kiesler and Helm also see a future for helpful, smaller automated doors.
“How does this work for what peoples’ needs are? Are they elderly? Do they need accessibility?” Kiesler says. “If I’m in a wheelchair, I could go outside easily. These are now emerging, where before it was unobtainable.”
“Automation has really opened … a lot of doors for us,” Helm says.
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Big doors, big dreams: A Q&A with Kiesler and Helm