Cottagey interior doors

[Sunnyshores]

As part of the refurb to our 1780s cottage we need to replace the 1970s doors. There is unfortunately nothing original in the cottage apart from a beam in the dining room and one beam in the lounge. The celiings arent low, its extended to the back and the side and all the rooms are squareish, light and modern looking.
Anyway, doors.... I think the oak ledge and brace type doors would be too characterful and presumably they need the skirtings and door frames in wood too? The joiner in the village makes a more modern wood door with panels and then painted with eggshell. But at £300 a door, and we need 15, its too expensive.
Any other ideas?

[MisForMumNotMaid]

We have new oak ledge and braced doors in our cottage. They don't look too cottagey quaint because they're crisp lines.

Have you done a google images search internal doors or been on pinterest for inspiration, it helps me visualise.

[NotGoodNotBad]

Salvage yard? Could take a while to find the right sizes, but if you pick a common style you'll get them eventually.

[Sausagedog27]

At that age they probably woud have been the ledge and brace doors- i dont think they would look too cottagy, unless you are describing a Georgian mansion as your cottage Skirtings etc I've seen painted with wooden doors- I think it works quite well.

The salvage yard is also a very good suggestion!

[Sunnyshores]

Sausagedog - no unfortunately its a cottage!!

So, you really think I could have unpainted wooden doors with white frames?
I love salvage (looking for flagstones at mo) but as the house does look more modern I'd rather have the crisp lines for the doors.

Misformumnotmaid - if you dont mind, how much did you pay per door?

[fossil971]

The LPD range of "Nostalgia Rustic Oak" doors are quite nice. We have some of the "oak button bead" frame ledge & brace: because they are framed you can use ordinary hinges rather than the black iron strap ones. We have them in wood frames but I think lightish timber in white looks fine, in fact avoids woodstain overload. It's your house! Ours were about £150 per door unfinished. They aren't solid oak, they are engineered & veneer but they look the part and at that price I wasn't complaining.

If you get looking on the internet nearly all the timber yards and door places stock LPD, they are very commonly available.

[MisForMumNotMaid]

We brought oak from magnet trade via our builder they were £100 each incl vat. I negotiated.

[Sunnyshores]

Fossil - framed sounds a good idea, the black hinges would be too much, I do want cottagey but like dark woodstain, I dont want the overload!

MisForMumNotMaid - thats a great price.

[PigletJohn]

A cottage with 15 interior doors?

how big a cottage is that?

do you need fireproof? do you want sound-resistant? Are you going to stain or paint?

[GrendelsMum]

I agree with PigletJohn - a cottage with 15 interior doors is surely a farmhouse?

Anyway, for what it's worth, we have a range of 17th, 18th and 19th century doors, all painted white. We also have some modern doors, pine ledged and painted white. Next to the original doors its glaringly obvious that the quality is much lower, and particularly that the planks are both narrower and thinner, from the changing wood available to us nowadays.

However, the replacements which aren't next to the original doors don't look wrong, because there's nothing to compare them with.

I'd therefore suggest that it doesn't matter and you pick what you like and you can afford.

[PigletJohn]

If you go for Ledged, Braced and Framed you can get them in external grade, which is thicker and will be stronger and hold together better.

L&B is very much a shed door. Bead and Butt is a posher version of LB&F with a finer front face, where the boards are grooved to make a feature of the joints.

Here's an example of an "economical" LB&F (though I don't like knotty pine)

And here's an example of a fake, which is an oak veneer over a fire-resisting solid core. It will feel much more heavy and substantial and will need a good frame, but will be very good at blotting out sound due to its solid construction and extra mass.

I especially like panelled doors, but it may not be right for a small, rustic, pre-Victorian home.

[Sunnyshores]

OK, its a big cottage, but not huge, it only has 4 beds, 3 baths/toilets - but lots of small, downstairs rooms which go round so each room has a door coming in and a door coming out.
Thanks for all suggesitons will have a look at some in real life over the weekend.

[Yfronts]

Second hand doors. Theres a door dipper person near us that has tons!

[Yfronts]

Our doors were about 65 each and looked like this. sorry no idea how to link


www.google.co.uk/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=cottage+doors&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&docid=__qOHqKpQaiT5M&tbnid=nCqquO-BYd25zM:&ved=0CAUQjRw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lassco.co.uk%2F%3Fid%3D58%26tx_evlasscoproductdetail_pi1%255Buid%255D%3D11488&ei=tttAUYuONOGk0QWOiICgAg&bvm=bv.43287494,d.d2k&psig=AFQjCNHocwpEIJkV6ntNYNwPjInTToqEIQ&ust=1363291436183004

[amistillsexy]

Just thought you'd like to know...when I tried to describe this kind of door, not knowing it's real name, our builder said 'ah, you mean shit house doors, love!'

[GrendelsMum]

It's one of those 4 bed, 3 bathroom houses that upmarket estate agents mysteriously take into their heads to call cottages, isn't it?

It always reminds me of that bit in Sense and Sensibility where someone talks about a cottage which turns out to have about 16 bedrooms and several wings.

[PigletJohn]

Yfronts

the door in your pic is ledged but not braced (no diagonals) so it will tend to droop into a trapezoid with the lock edge lower than the hinge edge.

when I were a lad there were one of them on the gardener's outside WC.
(Edwardian house)

[fossil971]

When I say the ones I linked to are framed, ledged and braced, it is like this: on the front it looks only like planks of tongue and groove. On the back there is an oblong of planks right round the door, a horizontal half way up and two diagonal braces. Both the main planks and the braces are almost an inch thick. Even my builder, who was going to charge me £500 per door to custom-build some, was impressed. Definitely not one of those thin wobbly shed doors.

(This was after I rejected every door available at Wickes, Magnet, B&Q etc as too crappy, too expensive or not looking right!). It's the usual thing of decent products not being sold directly to the public so you need to find a retailer who is not a DIY place.

It's important to seal your doors with oil or varnish else the moisture content changes and they start warping, IME.

If its an old house are you at risk of coming unstuck with odd sizes?

Ours is a "cottage" which is a rambling 4 bed and 3wc now due to the extension but it seemed a shame to rename it!

[PigletJohn]

On your link, fossil, the "frame" looks as if it is nailed on the back of the door, rather than being built first and having the boards laid into it, so I don't think it's quite "right" It would matter more in an external door where the top and bottom end grain would suffer water penetration. I have an LBF as a side gate, but it was made as an external door so is thicker and more solid than most internal doors.

Btw veneered doors can be stained, varnished or painted, but generally not oiled or waxed.

[fossil971]

The main thing is the door should be sealed ie waterproof isn't it?

I don't know how they make them but yes the frame is nailed/screwed/glued/stapled to the back of the "planks". So yes the end grain of the long planks is exposed top and bottom just like it would be for any cottage door. I don't guess it matters as long as it's sealed and you're not trying to use it outside.

[Sunnyshores]

Gosh, even more complicated than I thought - I just want a pretty door!!

Fossil exactly which door did you get from LPD? I dont think we'll have a problem with sizes as the door frames are a result of 1970's 'refurb'....

PigletJohn - should I lay the (probably thicker than current carpet) stone flooring first so doors fit properly?

Ideally I also wanted to replace the 1970s thin skirtings, with higher ones (painted white as people are saying that would be OK with natural wood doors). Suppose that is more complicated than it sounds too?

[PigletJohn]

yes, the joiner will trim the doors, so needs the floors to be down first, unless you ask him to guess.

changing skirtings is not difficult, especially if you are going to bigger ones. It will be better if they are spaced off the wall at the bottom in an old house, in case of damp. You can ask the joiner to fix them to wooden grounds fixed to the wall, IMO this is better than nailing or scewing them into the brick, or gluing them to plaster, and also less destructive if they ever have to come off, as you only need small countersunk screws in the skirting. If the walls are uneven you will have a gap to fill at the top of the skirting.

Cutting internal corners on skirting is more difficult than you think, a skilled joiner wil cut a scribed joint, not a mitre, which looks better when the timber expands and contracts.

[PigletJohn]

p.s.

If I were you I would change to a more traditional architrave as well.

[fossil971]

I got exactly the Button Bead FL&B. They are engineered/veneered not solid oak just to be clear. I think this means they are made of wood strips like a butcher block worktop with veneer over the top, most doors are like this now, although I note there is a solid oak in the range too. They came unfinished but coloured up to a honey colour when varnished.

IIRC I either googled to find a nearby LPD stockist or emailed LPD. The local guy didn't have that exact door in but ordered them for me.

picture of the back

HTH