Shut the front door

So here's the door from the outside looking in. The glass has enough of a texture that it allows in plenty of light, but you can't make out what's going when you peer through it. Nice to have the 'furniture' where we wanted it, though I regret not getting the door knocker that came with. The door bell is stuck on with double sided sellotape but hey ho, it seems to work OK. The door is sealed in properly so there's no draft.

UPDATE: Our heating bill dropped by about £30-£40 a month since getting this door installed! Also, in previous winters we'd need a little fan heater to warm up the room quicker as the radiators didn't seem up to the job - this year, we've retired the fan heater to the attic. 

New front door

Earlier this year I blogged about getting a quote from the Anglian Home door company. Long story short - it was the sort of sales technique that makes my skin crawl. The opposite of that experience was dealing with the (aptly named) Composite Door Shop. You could fill out a virtual door designer, stating all your preferences for a bespoke service, and even with the addition of a letterbox (that Anglian couldn't manage) and swapping the location of the handle around (again, Anglian weren't sure about doing this...) we got the door exactly as we wanted it, for £1,000. Our builders installed it in less than a day.

I'll update with a picture of the outside of it when I remember to take a snap (FYI It's navy blue with silver 'furniture'). Here are a couple of shots taken early evening, showing how much light comes through now. The glass is opaque enough to let the light in, but not enough to see any detail on the other side. When I have my face up to the glass I can just make out colours but no shapes.

The door itself has multi-point locking mechanism, and if looked after should last for more than 30 years.

Wobbly fence

Spring is a month late this year, so this shot taken a few days ago looks like the middle of winter when normally those bare trees would be full of green buds. The reason for this post is that next door has decided to landscape their garden by removing most of the foliage and decking the entire space. It means the wonky fence that you can see will be replaced with something more solid - and taller. There were plans to put in a gate so that the kids can easily pop over, but this has been shelved in favour of a lower fence closer to the houses that the kids can climb (as they do now).

The lovely Polish builders are doing that job so we've briefed them on doing some more jobs for us while they're here. The first thing was to measure up a new front door, as they'd be the ones fitting it. I'm so happy that we've found a place that manufacturers composite doors to a high spec for way less than Anglian Home Doors - it has the rather SEO friendly name of http://www.bespoke-composite-doors.co.uk/ and the door we've found (which does allow a letterbox slot!) comes in at £700. The installation should be around £350. The second thing was to quote for finishing the rest of the building work - ie the top floor of the house. Will update in due course!

Anglian Home door quote

I made an appointment for Anglian Home Improvements to come round on Friday night to give us a quote for a new front door. Their advertising had gone through the roof - there was a 50% off insert in one of the newspapers, and after a quick visit to their website I now get targeted display ads showing me their 50% off products on every other website I visit. I'd gone from never knowing about this company to being reminded of them every hour.

A quick search online revealed many frustrated customers who simply wanted a quote but were punished with outdated sales techniques. There were tales of salesmen taking hours to leave and trying to wear the customer down. Crazy examples such as 'If you don't commit now this offer leaves when I do'. I had a momentary panic but decided that if the salesman tried any of this schtick on us, we'd deal with it.

I'd blogged about Silvelox doors three years ago (£3,000) which are top of the range. Friends recently had two Welglaze doors installed (£1,600 for a door including 'furniture', fitting, a full-size side panel of glass & VAT) and neighbours had a quote for a local company to fit a standard wooden door with glass (from £450 plus 'furniture'), so we knew the range was varied.

When I made the appointment I asked for a ballpark range of door prices but was told that they only discuss his with the client in person.

I was expecting Anglian to be a mid-range product (ie around £1,600) and with 50% off be an £800 door plus letterbox and a nice handle. It turns out I was wrong. The salesman arrived (early, despite the snow) and brought in a little DVD player to show us their cheesy sales video. He had a heavy holdall with paperwork and brochures, but oddly, no samples to show us how the colours look in real life. He insisted the colours in the brochure were accurate, when I showed him the printed colour swatch and the accompanying photo didn't even match hue, he just shrugged.

When I asked him if the handle could be fitted on the other side of the door instead of the side shown in his brochure he said 'I don't know. I don't see why not!" (Seriously, isn't this the sort of thing he should be briefed on?!)

Long story short: He stayed for 45 minutes and managed to bring down his £3,000 (!) door with the basic sandblasted glass to £1,495 including VAT and installation. I balked at this and showed him the additional £150 off voucher I'd been emailed for making the appointment directly. "Oh, no, I've already included that discount in my calculations." Really? Pfft. So we pointed out that not being able to have a letterbox fitted into the specific door we liked was going to be a problem (we'd have to investigate other methods of collecting the mail). He did some more calculations on his notepad, muttering "30% off..." (his scribbles were ilegible) then he said '£1,200. That's what I can do this door for, any less and we won't be making a profit.'

I suppose we would have been happy with £1,000 but after the video, the fake calculations and the constant deferring to Rob instead of me (what year is it?!) I didn't feel like stretching the extra £200. It's so close and yet... well, we may still go with it if we can find another mail solution.

In the meantime, how hard would it be for Anglian to just publish guide prices for their products and save their sales people wasting hours of their time? Surely a false economy? We would be far more likely to purchase the product knowing the cost instead of wondering how much of the quote has to cover the salesman's commission.

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...