New Front Door

A good many evenings during the last month or so have been spent trying to decide what to do about our front door. At the moment it is a bit of a hotchpotch with obscure glass in the door, clear glass in the side panel, painted finish on the panel, stained finish on the door and a rather naff painted plywood panel above the door to take up the extra space :

It has always been on the plan to replace it, and after discussions with architects, builders, and between ourselves, we have now settled on something. In preparation, the cat-flap has been relocated to another door (actually two cat flaps through a pair of doors) and the cats patiently retrained about it's whereabouts. Actually, I exaggerate, these are cats not dogs - they worked it out for themselves !

We chose a local joiner to build us a bespoke door and frame which we have designed ourselves after much searching on the web, pondering over magazine pictures and wandering the streets looking at (sometimes even photographing) other people's front doors. It has been fitted over the last two days.

The door has a mortice-and-tenon frame, with an arched header rail. Inside is a ledge-and-brace zigzag which is then clad in oak planks, with all the joints hidden by oak strips. This is hung in the middle of a full width frame giving a 3-part glazed side panel each side. The door is taller, thicker and wider than standard, but is still in the usual door proportions.

The ceiling part of the porch has been clad in the same timber, as has the gutter board. It is all finished using the same oil we have used on the floor, so the whole thing has an integrated look and feel that was completely absent before :





An internal letter box flap is awaited to finish the inside, and the strips of timber covering the joins on the outside are supposed to have black square head metal studs, but neither of these have arrived at the suppliers yet. Note the strange hinge arrangement shown in this internal view, which apparently is not strange at all for a 4 hinge door (which this needs because it is very heavy) :


The theory is that gravity makes the door 'pivot' around the centre hinge, putting the bottom one under compression and the top one under tension. The hinges are better under compression than tension, so the 4th one is added to help the top one out. As usual, it makes a lot of sense when you think about it.