If you live in a Victorian house please tell me about your (internal) doors.

[MuffinMclay]

Due to a DIY mishap we need to replace all the doors upstairs with new ones, and would like to do so with something that adds a bit of character to what is a fairly characterless Victorian house. But I'm rather clueless as to what we should be going for.

Our doors are painted as they were in terrible condition when we moved in, and we also replaced the top 2 panels in some of the downstairs doors with glass to let some more light in.

We have NO door handles downstairs though - it drives me MAD . They had been replaced (with horrible brass edwardian ones 2/3 of the way up the door) when we bought the house so we took them off and tried to replace them with something a bit more stylish/appropriate. Unfortunately the doors are all buggared and the door handles won't go on where they should do

Am eager to know what the DIY accident was!!!

We have original victorian 4 panel doors, painted white, throughout the whole house.

They do have (vaguely nasty) brass faux victorian handles though, but as they were all done only 2 years ago, and all work and match, can't really justify changing them yet.
Also, like washersaurus, I have a feeling that the doors wouldn't actually take traditional mechanisms any more.

Aw golly. You lot are going to hate me when I mention my new, tack goes to heaven, leather and brass door levers

Only in the sitting room mind. They only had two sets reduced in homebase.

hee hee

I have beehive knobs, in satin nickel, didn't go down the brass route but they look nice enough. I think you can mix a modern with old, as long as you leave the original features intact. Unfortunately out of 7 rooms (including bedrooms!), only 1 original fireplace remained in the house, we had to replace downstairs living and dining rooms, replacing them in 5 bedrooms would just be far too expensive.

round black knobs on white original doors looks great

oooh, noddy, do you have a link? Am trying to picture them...

we have replaced the nasty white doors someone put in our house with reproduction oak 4 panel doors. Varnished with clear non-yellowing varnish and brushed brass handles - looks much better than it did.

bewilder - where did you get your internal doors?

Pgwithnumber3, did I say anything about pine? I said they would have them in their natural wooden colour. Unfortunately, most people wouldn't be able to pay for mahogany doors so... pine was also left visible. That, however, does NOT mean that ABSOLUTELY EVERYONE had unpainted wood doors, but that they were quite fashionable, at least in this country (wouldn't know what to say about the American version of Victorian Architecture).

If you want to know more details about door styles a good place to start is the Geffrye Museum in London, it is focused on domestic interiors.

I accept that you have done extensive research in the subject. I confess that the few things I know of the subject come from research carried out while I was studying interior design and, at a later date, for my MA disertation.

When we stripped 150 layers of gloss off the pine doors and staircase in our mid-victorian terrace the bottom layer was a kind of weird wood-grain, so it would have looked like wood but not like pine, if that makes sense.

Very gloomy it was, though, specially since they would have had much lower lighting levels than we had. Can't beat a bit of white eggshell on doors imo.

You can get nice plain white china knobs from john lewis, which look reasonably plausible.

Gosh, so many posts. Sorry to go awol. RL interfered with MNing today. Will read now.

DIY mishap is a little misleading (dramatic licence!). We had new carpets fitted today. Old ones didn't have proper underlay underneath. Once underlay and decent carpet has were added the doors couldn't close (were 3 cm too long). Dh took them all off to trim them with a jigsaw, did the first one and found it wasn't a proper door after all but a bizarre mock door made out of very thin plywood held together at the base by wooden batons. Once the end was trimmed off the first one it sort of collapsed in on itself. All very odd.

These people are fab but pricey (London, natch).

Agree with what the others say about the DIY store versions - we have a mixture of real and repro in our flat and the new ones stick out like sore thumbs.

Some of those are nice, but we need 5 doors. I can't really justify that sort of expense (not planning to stay in this house for more than a year or two).

We have wooden panelled victorian doors. We needed to replace one about 2 years ago and after searching everywhere (very odd dimensions) and getting a quote from a joiners which we couldn't afford (230 quid), we found a brilliant firm on ebay that sell reclaimed stripped pannelled doors.
Just over 100 quid with delivery
The seller was called Periodpinedoors

They had hundreds on there and you need to know your sizes and then it's just a case of trawling through.

troutpout - brilliant, thank you. Just been having a quick look at them on ebay, and they seem to have the sort of thing we need.

Okay MemysonandI, I give up, you know more than me. Just what I researched You don't have to sound so patronising.

pgwithno3, whereabouts in the NW are you? We have nasty modern fake Victorian doors downstairs & I would love to replace them with nice ones (does your bloke put proper beading on and everything?)

pgwithno3, I am stupid. I am happy to absorb your research! I have a Victorian House that I am in the process of renovating.

Specifically internal doors...

Oh, and off subject, but what tiles would you suggest for kitchen/dining room? Am leaning towards red quarry....

Oooh, troutpout, just found your ebay seller too!

Trouble is our downstairs doorframes, inc vestibule door, were re-fitted with standard ones a few years ago, I bet none of the reclaimed ones are even close to standard size

Wendy - I am in Southport but the guy who makes them is in Liverpool. He made all our replica sash windows as well, he is very good and reasonable. We had a few quotes ranging from his £17,000 to £35,000! He was recommended by family friends. He will make them to whatever you want, we just got his to copy our original doors downstairs.

Ilovemydog - I think you are better asking MemySonandI, she is better qualified in the area of Victorian doors, don't want to give you misinformed information.

Ours are like that upstairs, fio - funny size though, about 31 by 75. (Downstairs had been replaced instead, with small-pane glass doors with hideous patterned glass.) They were hardboarded over too.

So were the beautiful pitch pine balusters & newel post - not only boarded over, they hacked chunks out of the newel & used several of the balusters to make a frame round it to pin the hardboard to.

PHILISTINES!!!!

Muffin, there is a door shop in Herts I know of which does the style you need in a wide range of sizes - not just the standard ones. We got ours from there - all the originals were long gone... Our carpenter did have to do a bit of "adjusting" when he fitted them....

If you don't find any reclaimed ones I'll post the details.