I claimed back in January, that 2014 would mark the year of the door for us. Well, I didn’t know it at the time but within the month we were the proud new owners of internal doors to replace all of our old ones.
Whilst I think there is a lot of quality in original doors of a house, sadly this just wasn’t the case for ours anymore. The poor things had just become quite shabby. They had been hacked, flooded, dented and more over the 2 years we’ve lived here, and as they were made of what can only be described as woodchip, we wanted something just a tad more modern.
Joe’s parents one weekend took us to a door warehouse that I would never have known existed. If you’re in Manchester I’d recommend giving it a shout (get in touch if you want the address!)
They sell doors which have either been discontinued in some manner or didn’t quite pass quality assurance in the manufacturing line. Whilst that sounds like it could be rubbish, it also means that if a door has just a slight mark on it, they weren’t able to sell it as ‘new’ and so it ends up at places like this. As we’re going to paint/stain ours anyway, small defects weren’t an issue and there was opportunity for some real bargains. And seriously, this little warehouse was packed with doors – all kinds.
The style we liked included a beautiful oak door with a horizontal pane of glass running through. The glass really helps the light from the kitchen to bounce around the entire downstairs. The grooves in the wood make it slightly different to anything I’ve seen and I think they just look so neat. We’ve got 3 of these downstairs now, and as your eye follows through the glass rather than stopping at the door, it makes the floor space look larger.
There are slight imperfections in the wood and that’s about it, meaning we could have them for less than 50% of the original retail price buying them elsewhere. We’re going to stain them soon – probably a very similar colour to what they currently are – just for protection and to give them a more even finish to hide those small imperfections, of which I can only see 2, yippee.
We bought chrome handles to match throughout the whole house, and I think they’re a little bit lush.
(And yes, one day I’m hoping my pictures won’t have backgrounds full of laundry and storage – sorry, this is just reality!)
You may notice, apart from our messy hallway which we’re hoping to finally decorate this summer, that we haven’t removed the plastic off the glass panels yet. I cannot WAIT to take this off!! It’s like taking it off your mobile phone for the first time. Joe insists I wait until our hallway is plastered though. Nooooooo! I suppose we’ve got to be sensible sometimes…
As for upstairs, we went for pine panelled doors. What’s nice is that they were all new from what we can tell. No issues whatsoever. And we’re planning on painting these in white to match the bathroom door.
Again, please excuse the hallway. We still don’t exactly have proper walls or floors in there!
Sure it’s just a bunch of doors, but here we are, another step closer to making our home look less like a jumble sale. And that’s just fine by me.
