Period front door restoration

The wooden front doors of your home are extremely important for maintaining the character of your property. Without these beautiful doors, your home loses a fantastic period feature.

However, if you’d like to modernise your home’s energy efficiency, you may feel like there is no other option but to change the doors.

Well, our period front door restoration services not only restore your wooden doors back to their former glory but can also add 21st-century glass and draughtproofing technology without changing the look of these original features of your period property. 

The benefit of restoration over replacement 

One of the bigger benefits of restoring period doors rather than replacing them is that it keeps bespoke doors in place.

Many French doors and Victorian doors were custom-made for individual properties.

These are heritage doors that add so much character to your property. Removing original doors takes away a lot of the charm and style of your home.

But by preserving them, restoring them and adding modern glazing and draughtproofing technology, you can enjoy all the benefits of modern window and door technology as well as the classic style of your doors.

This makes restoring period doors a very popular choice for many period homeowners. 

French door double glazing retrofitting – replace single glazing with double glazing

French doors have such an iconic style. And while there are modern uPVC replacements, nothing is going to do your home’s style more justice than the original doors.

Of course, the doors are likely single-glazed, though, which is an issue when it comes to energy efficiency.

However, we can retrofit double glazing into most timber doors without changing their look of them at all. We preserve the style but update the glass and draughtproofing technology.

This ensures your doors look as beautiful as they always have, but the areas you can’t see now have up-to-date energy-efficient technology to reduce your energy bills.

Our process of wooden front door restoration

Our period door restoration services vary from project to project, and it greatly depends on how much work is needed to bring a door back to life.

However, here are the common steps included in most projects. 

Step 1

Stripping the paint off the front door

We strip the paint off of your doors to assess all of the damage to the wood.

We look at the most common areas for rot (the bottom of the door and sills, for example), but also every other part of the door.

Spet 2

Repair rotten wood and structural issues

Any rot we find on the door and the door frame is then repaired. For larger areas of damage, we splice in fresh wood.

For smaller areas, we use a high-quality two-part epoxy that strengthens the wood around it. 

Step 3

Glazing – install energy-efficiency glazing

Next, we retrofit ultra-thin vacuum-sealed double glazing into the existing door.

The beauty of the door goes unchanged, but this increases its energy efficiency dramatically. The new glass and draught-proofing aimed to achieve “A” on the windows and door energy efficiency rating scale.

Step 4

Fit draught-proofing seals

We then install modern draught-proofing, which increases the energy efficiency of your door even more. 

Step 5

Painting front door

We then prime and paint the door with good quality exterior-grade paint, unless it is an internal door. 

Period doors style guide and history

Certain styles of doors were popularised at different times throughout history. However, previous homeowners may have changed their doors to keep up with the current styles and trends, just as you are doing now.

So, if your house is Georgian, for example, this doesn’t mean that your doors are from this period. We can help you find out which period your doors are from when we see them.

However, there are four main types of wooden doors on heritage properties, including:

• Georgian: 1714-1837
• Victorian: 1837-1901
• Edwardian: 1901-1910
• Interwar: 1919-1939

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