The tale of a door ....

Since the last post winter has decided to arrive - but without the usual 'November rain' - so the ponds, lakes and rivers are still dry:

- and the few days of fog and rain there have been have made little difference. Then in the past 48 hours the temperature has gone suddenly down and last night was minus 6 degrees C and the garden and hedgerows have been spray-painted with frost:

Anyway, this post is about the replacement of an ancient door. You may have noticed on our main website, old, red-coloured doors on the east side of the house:

We really like these doors, but the problem has been that the wood is starting to seriously degrade and the doors have simply been fixed in position - they do not open, and there is lots of silicone filler trying to fill the gaps ... which does not work, so there are big draughts into the sitting room:

What we thought might be possible was to make new, opening doors, with a maximum amount of glass and then remove the ancient doors, renovate them, and  re-hang them to open outwards as shutters.
We spoke to our good neighbour, Laurent, who is an artisan du bois. On Laurent's website ​we had seen some of his beautiful work, particularly with doors and windows. So we got Laurent to come and look at the work to assess whether it was possible. He confirmed it was possible and provided us with a quotation for the work that was a very pleasant surprise ... so, of course we accepted. Within a few days Laurent started work, firstly to take all the measurements for making the new glass-panelled door. He then made the new door in his workshop and once this was completed he returned to remove the old door. The first thing was to take out all the silicone filler .... there was a huge amount of it: 

Then it was a question of gradually working the doors fully open ... which, as soon as it was done, showed the view that would be open up from the sitting room, with a splendid view of Orsey's olive tree!

The doors then needed to be lifted off the old hinges:

- and the panel that sat above the door was very carefully removed:

We will not be able to refit the panel, as the new door needs take the full height of the opening. But we'll reuse the panel, as it is obviously original and very attractive - talking of which, the removal of the door revealed a carving on the beam above the door with a date of 1811 and a rather strange carving ... I will put up a photo of these in a later post, as they are interesting.
Laurent now brought in the door frame and glass that he had made and fitted it - quite something to do this from the original measurement, with irregular shaping of beams within the opening to work around; so, it was a slightly 'tense' couple of hours as the framework and glass panelled doors went in:

But everything fitted perfectly and we are hugely pleased with the result. It lets the morning light flood into the sitting room, eliminates the draughts with the double glazing and proper fitting, and the additional height of the glass doors gives it a balance within the overall building that feels 'right'. This additional height, higher of course than the original doors (as they had the panel above them), means that the original doors' restoration is more than just making good the deterioration of the woodwork - a whole panel needs to be added at the base, to match the height of the new doors. This will be done, using chestnut wood again, and mimicking the old carving at the top of the doors:

So, Laurent is working on this at the moment - and he will also colour the overall woodwork of the old doors, using traditional materials. We are really looking forward to seeing the restored doors and how Laurent fits them as outward-opening shutters .... and we hope we will have achieved 'the best of both worlds' ... with new, fitted doors, while preserving the old ones in a new 'role'. Hoorah!! Watch this space ......