At the risk of treading on Unmitigated toes, I just wanted to share this lovely door with you. It is at the northern (park) end of Queens Rd near the opticians. The house is having quite a lot of work carried out on it at the moment. It is a shame that some previous owner made rather a hash of fitting a letterbox, but the basic style and structure of the door rises above that. The point is we simply cannot make doors like this any more. The skills have been lost. Those few craftsmen left would charge thousands to make a replica and would then struggle to find timber of a good enough quality. This door is over a hundred years old, yet perfectly serviceable. Where did it all go wrong. Progress I suppose and the need to conform to a government standard of door manufacture that achieves a sustainability rating of Tog 15. Those who share my commiseration's feel free to rant, and rant hard, below.
4 comments:
Rant, rant, rant. It all went wrong with DIY superstores Toby, and the ubiqitous Magnet & Southern's All-In-One Fanlight Door. The good news is that you can still get good doors made like this one, and that's by my son-in-law. At least I think that's what he does.
A serious post! I am sure that there are people who CAN make the doors...it's just that punters have been convinced that what they need are plastic things, in brown or white pvc, designed by people whose style sensitivity comes from a two-week part-time course at Wisbech Poly.....that and the fact that not many PROPER houses are built these days!
Now that energy saving is now so important many perfectly sound doors and windows are going to ripped out and replaced by less attractive UPVC products changing the character and appearance of older neighbourhoods. How long before a humble Victorian terraced house is listed because it still has it's original doors and windows?
In London's Glittering Leytonstone, we have row after row of yer bog-standard London yellowstock terraces. For the most part it's uPVC land, but a surprising amount still have their original doors. Ours isn't original, but it's so heavy that if it fell on you it would kill you stone dead - it's mahogany. My dad, a lifelong craftsman in wood was horrified when I painted it rather than deck varnished it.
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