Thursday 27 August 2009

Entrance door



The London summer has been relatively good this year, while there were plenty of monsoon showers there's also been loads of sunny days. I've taken to wedging open our front door to let the afternoon sunshine pour in. As you can see, it completely illuminates the front hall and fills the house with bright light. Our current front door is a traditional Georgian style, painted fire engine red, and while perfectly functional doesn't let any light in. Rob's attitude is that the wedging open solution is fine - we live down a dead end, private road so there's no chance of the kids getting run over. However, keeping the door open doesn't work so well when the temperature gets a bit cooler... and now a neighbourhood cat boldly comes inside when he thinks no-one's looking!

I'd like a simple modern door with glass panels at the top which would match our interior decor. And of course the panels would let some light in when it's closed. The top of the range styles which feature all kinds of security enhancements and are fully bespoke door solutions are not cheap though. Silvelox for example offer 11 different types of glass which can be used with 13 different door styles, but they'll set you back around £3,000 including fitting. The photo below (from the Silvelox website, excuse the house in this example!) shows a door with glass panels at each side which would've also been a good solution - our door width unfortunately isn't wide enough.

One of my neighbours asked a local company how much it would cost to make a basic door with a segment of glass included and they quoted £450. You'd then need to buy the door furniture (ie the locks, handles etc) and have them fitted on top. We have a metal security gate and a monitored alarm so I think spending £3K on a bespoke secure door seems a tad excessive (and we've got nothing of value to nick anyway). Still, good to see what's out there incase we win the Lottery...


2 comments:

jfoo said...

I have friends who have these retractable screen doors that would sort out the stray cat/child/beastie issue. http://www.homedepot.ca/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/CatalogSearchResultView?D=974387&Ntt=974387&catalogId=10051&langId=-15&storeId=10051&Dx=mode+matchallpartial&Ntx=mode+matchall&recN=112206&N=0&Ntk=P_PartNumber

I had never seen one in the Uk but they run rampant in Canada. We have more bug and stray bear cub or deer visitor worries when doors are wide open then ferile cats :)

Totalrenovering said...

I like your house its really nice! What a very excellent house. Thank you for posting.