Measure the prospective door on all four sides at top and bottom the door may have been planed in one area and not another. Ideally, the door should be the same depth-exterior doors are generally thicker than interior passage doors-and slightly larger than the opening. Once you have a clear idea of what the door might have looked like, or how you want the door to look, explore your options.įor evidence of the original dimensions, look on the door frame (assuming it’s intact). Still, it was common to find the same door on a Colonial Revival house and on a Tudor, with only the hardware chosen used to differentiate between them. Various architectural revivals offered a grab bag of style details. As for homes built after World War II, original examples abound for you to study, right in your own neighborhood.īy the 1920s, entry doors had become more standardized in size and configuration. Although each of the many revivals offered a grab bag of style characteristics, it was also fairly common to find the same door on dwellings of supposedly different styles-Colonial and Tudor, for instance-with only a change of hardware differentiating them. Beveling and other embellishments were sometimes applied to the door itself rather than cut into the panel.īy the 1920s, builders had begun to standardize the front door in terms of configuration and size. Advances in millwork meant more elaborate use of architectural relief. The single paneled door doubled up to form matched pairs for such architectural styles as Second Empire, Italianate, and Queen Anne. Since “Colonial” has been in constant revival ever since, these differences were smoothed out and refined over time, with the result that the profiles on early-20th-century panel doors are looser than the early examples.Ī Federal Revival door, beautifully proportioned in harmony with fanlightĪnd sidelights, comes from Historic Doors. The angles on Greek Revival doors are significantly taller and narrower than either Georgian or Federal. Georgian raised-panel doors, for example, tend to have a slightly shallower and more rounded profile than Federal-era doors. Four, six, or more panels are fitted into this interlocking framework to permit the wood to move as it shrinks and swells with changes in the weather.ĭepending on era, panels can be almost pancake flat-at right angles to perfectly flat stiles and rails-or raised: angled or beveled away from the flat parts of the door surface. Old panel doors are built with vertical stiles and horizontal rails using mortise-and-tenon construction for a tight, durable fit. The panel door-probably the most common door type-first appeared with the Georgian style, circa 1715. The earliest doors were batten: rough-hewn planks or vertical boards held together with cross braces. The most elaborate front doors date to the late 19th century. As a rule of thumb, the older the door, the plainer and less detailed it would have been. The symmetrical arrangement of the entire façade.ĭetails matter. A signature element of the Georgian-period Joseph Barnard House (1769) is the door and surround with its shallow, segmental arch, in perfect proportion to Another option: Consult old builder’s catalogs and online resources for designs that appear on houses similar to yours. If the house is particularly early or in a rural setting, look for examples of similar houses in the region. First, look around the neighborhood for intact doors on houses of roughly the same age, style, and degree of detail. Depending on the style and age of the house, however, it’s possible to make an educated guess as to what the door would have looked like. You may know the current door is “wrong,” but have no idea what used to be. Like so much in life, what’s gone is gone and sometimes it’s not easy to replace.
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