Has your front door gone wrong?

[PigletJohn]

Bit mean of me to ask. All will become clear. I am not going to try to sell you a door though!

Question 1:
Has your front door ever gone wrong?

Question 2
What is/was it made of?

Question 3
About how old?

1. Nope, unless you count the paint peeling. Steel door, house faces south, in summer the outside gets very hot.

1. Steel door, steel frame, sold as a unit (I think). We put in a double-glazed stained glass insert. The interior of the door is filled with some sort of insulation.

1. Previous owners... about 20 years old, I think.

Yes although our front door is the kitchen door and our proper "Front door is round the back" .

Every so often the lock jams and as it is a 5 lever mortise and a funny size it will be a swine to replace.

Soft wood probably installed in the 60s.

House built in 1910 with its back to the road and its frontage to the sea. Hence the front door being round the back.

Yes.

Wood (red cedar) with small glazed areas.

About a year old currently (grrrrr).

You have to push it away from you slightly (closing action) to turn the snib to then pull it open. And likewise when coming home you have to pull it slightly more shut to turn the key and then push it open. That's one half anyway, the other door mostly stays bolted shut.

No
Wood
27 years

Last house:
Yes
UPVC
About 15 years

Not front door but back door.

Extensively double glazed UPVC

The framing was pulled out of shape by the weight of the glazing, put in about 25 years ago by previous owners.

Replaced 10 years ago with wood, no problems since.

Yes, but not fatally (yet) - seal has come out, frame wobbly (and the self cleaning mechanism is shot) and so it's draughty. Hate it. Want new one, watching with interest, hoping for helpful conclusion by Pigletjohn :)

UPVC. White horrible cheap crappy thing.

No idea. Here when we bought house ~15 years ago.

1. Ye-es... there are gaps around it, I need to put excluder strips around the frame I suppose.
2. Pine from the 1930s, when trees were permitted to grow at their natural rate and wood actually denser and harder as a result (stairs are the same hard, solid pine) Stained glass panel in top half.
3. Between 70-80 years.

It has always been well-behaved, to be fair. We put new stainless steel hinges to rehang it, as the existing ones were rising hinges, which I didn't like. And replaced the 1930s letterbox as it was sadly too small for the majority of our post.

Yep, bloody thing fell off its bottom hinge on Tuesday. Its probably not what you meant though as we're currently living in an old static caravan so its a flimsy plasticky door that was bound to go wrong sooner or later anyway.

Not me but I had to deal with it.

1)Yes, drop at hinges caused lock fragmentation

2)Wood

3)8yrs

keep 'em coming!

Is there a pattern yet?

Only once. I lived in a rented house for one year and the door was nearly new, wooden. I think it had been hung badly and it was starting to slip so the locks didn't quite match up. Eventually we had to stop 'double locking' it as the door lock was no longer in exactly the same place as the fitting in the frame and if we'd stayed there long enough we probably wouldn't have been able to open the ordinary lock either. The landlord knew but didn't deal with it.

Other than that, I think I've always lived in houses with wooden doors, many of them very old, and had no problems.

Yes fell off hinges to my surprise and horror

UPVC

30 years maybe don't know

Yes ours is wrong!
It's upvc
12 years old.

ALL of the houses on the estate have the same problem!
The beading around the glass has gone yellow. Doesn't matter if the house faces north or south (different sun exposure) but they ave all yellowed. It looks crap on an otherwise perfectly fine white front door!

Well, this would put me off having a upvc front door, if I hadn't already hated the way they look so much that I'd never have considered one.

The other thing that occurs to me is that most of the stuff that goes wrong with a (decent quality) wooden door can be put right by a decent joiner. I replaced our shitty old door with a salvaged one that matched the age of the house. When we got it, it was a bit of a wreck... Thick paint flaking down to the bare wood, filthy, too small for the doorway, glass cracked, terrible locks, and hung the wrong way round. I got a joiner in to redo he door frame to fit, and swap the hinges and (new) locks to the other side, got new glass, stripped the paint, filled some superficial cracks, repainted it... Now it's a joy to behold, and neighbours I've never spoken to before have come up and asked me where we got it. In short, if the door is essentially good, there's very little you can't fix.

Yes but hinges rather than door, old wood victorian

Yes
UPVC
10 years

Yes, but I think it's more actually the frame coming away from the rest of the house than the actual door's fault.

Wooden. Maybe twenty years old? It's not the original, and I assume it was replaced by the bloke before us who did all sorts of half-arsed 'improvements'.

Yes, but I think it's more actually the frame coming away from the rest of the house than the actual door's fault.

Wooden. Maybe twenty years old? It's not the original, and I assume it was replaced by the bloke before us who did all sorts of half-arsed 'improvements'.

Question 1:
Yes - depending on the weather; It swells and we have to pull open as far as we can, which is centimetres! and then just grip the door pulling it open! Often have to shout through the door to the person at the other side to give it a shove please! Or it shrinks and won't lock! so we have to sort of 'lift' the door and slam it very hard! Sometimes we give-in, shut it from inside (has one of those catch locks) and then leave via the side or back door! A few months of the year it's fine. Really, really must replace it!

Question 2
Wood - not sure what type but it's a cheap door. Have seen it somewhere at approx. £100!

Question 3
It's been here since we bought the house 2yrs ago. Google street view shows a different uPVC door so at a guess approx. 10yrs old (the house is early 1800s, with wonky frames. However, believe it's not the door so badly fitted, as today it's sunny and I can't see sun shining through any gaps at the sides. Think it's just a poor quality door.

Our side and back doors are uPVC no problems with them in any weather. However, the locks do sometimes 'stick' - they were replaced when we moved in, so not old and guess the doors are 10yrs old.

Yes
Uvpc
About ten years

Horrible ...leaks, doesn't close properly, yellowing beading and the units have all misted
hate it but can't Afford to replace it

1. Not wrong as such. One has been crap.
2. Balsa wood, I suspect. It was bloody hollow.
3. Approx 57 years.

The other two have been wood, fine and composite, very fine. No problems with either.

yes, no , yes
upvc, wood, upvc
12 yrs, 105 yrs, 20 yrs

No
Wood
Victorian

Can you tell us now?

1: my front door pops open unless fully locked and is breezy and gappy.
2: wood
3: 140 years old.

Actually, we had the lock completely fuck up (trapping us in the house) on another door. It wasn't really the door's fault though; it was the lock attached to the door. I had to take it apart and fix it myself. For the record, the door was wooden (and I think original to the Edwardian house).

It was a bloody inefficient door though. Made the whole hall utterly freezing.