Front Entry Restoration

[jharkin]

Hi All-

If you followed my long running thread on our first year in the old cape you may have noticed that most of the projects we have tackled so far have been basic repairs, safety issues, updates and a lot of painting.

Well finally I get to take on an actual "restoration" project. Ive mentioned before that my front door is completely rotten, well the time has come for the replacement and while I am at it I'm doing a full restore of the front hall including repainting everything and restoring period appropriate hardware on all the doors.

~Jeremy





To get started here are the before pictures to show you what we are dealing with.

The front door. You can see the rot in the door and threshold.


Inside the front entry hall. Notice that the original Suffolk latches on our nice old 4 panel doors were removed at some point and replaced with knobs.


The paint is failing pretty bad in places...

[jharkin]

The new front door will be here on Thursday, at which point we will get it mounted and fit... then take it down again to get painted while we work on the threshold replacement and painting the rest of the hall. One of my good fiends who is a contractor is putting in the door for me, and I am going the painting and all the interior work myself.

For the door, rather than going with another batten style door (they are a dime a dozen on antique houses around here) we are putting in a traditional 6 panel. The house is technically federal period, rather than colonial, and the interior trim is a bit more formal so we though the 6 pane la better match than the typical rustic cape batten door.

For the hardware we got imitation thumb latches and a nice handmade door knocker from Historic Housefitters.

[jharkin]

While I wait for the door to get here I got started replacing the knobs on the interior doors with the new Suffolk latches. These are handmade reproductions, also from Historic Housefitters.

Yes, the doors are a mess, but the next step is to take them out to the garage, strip all the hardware, fill all the dents, sand prime and paint.

To make that go easier my friend the contractor is lending me a couple door painting rotisseries for a couple weeks

[jharkin]

Replacing the latch hardware also got me thinking about period a appropriate hinges.

A few of the older interior doors still have these very old iron butt hinges..


I did a lot of research and it seems that the earliest cast iron butt hinges were invented in the 1770's or 1780's and actually became very popular for new construction right after the American Revolution as manufacturing took off.

So it seems that even though you see pretty much nothing but H-L and strap hinges in typical colonial reproductions - a simple iron butt hinge would be period authentic for our house. This I like because I think H-hinges are a bit overdone, seems everyone who wants that early American look has them.

So we decided to leave most of our door hinges as is, but for a couple doors where the hinges are a mess I got these nice semi-handmade liftoff iron hinges from Horton Brass. A LOT less $$$ than redoing every door with H hinges.

[lisascenic]

To make that go easier my friend the contractor is lending me a couple door painting rotisseries for a couple weeks

I need need need to know what this is!

Photos, please!

[Old Colonial]

Great photos. My favorite houses are Federal and older. Good choice on the hinge. My house is somewhere around 1806. I have a mixture of H hinges and butt hinges. Most of the butt hinges are original hardware. I recently tried to get one off a door I stripped and broke it! I couldn't believe it lasted 200 years until ME! I found it interesting that the hinges were secured with one nail and one screw in each. Neither appeared to be a replacement. I ended up buying a lift off from Horton Brass like the one you bought.

For period colors have you looked at California Paints historic line? There are distributors in your area. Their website identifies which colors are from what periods. A number of home owned by Historic New England are painted with them.

Jeff

[jharkin]

lisa(?)-

Photos for sure. Its the first I ever heard of a door rotisserie and I cant wait to try it myself.


Jeff-

Colors. I hadn't looked into California. I'm checking it out now. For the colors so far we have been mostly working with the Benjamin Moore historic line as we have a dealer in walking distance and I have always had good luck with their paint. To be honest we haven't tried TOO hard to be exactly period with the colors but rather strive to be more period inspired while matching with our tastes.

One thing we like (especially my wife) about Federal is that they used a lot more variety and lighter/brighter tones of wall color and white and light color trim are common. As opposed to colonial where you always see whitewash on the plaster and the woodwork in a very few deep primary colors like yellow ochre, oxblood red, indigo blue.

The previous owners were going for the traditional colonial period look - whitewash and deep red/green woodwork with strap hinges etc all over the place. My wife has been choosing the colors and so far we have the den in a very light buff and the bedroom in a pale green both with bright white trim. I've found I like it more than I would have expected and while the colors wouldn't look "right" to somebody who has been to a lot of "colonial" museums they do do look like they would fit in the California federal collection and look similar to what we have seen of restored Federals in books.

More photos to come...

-Jeremy

[Nettie]

Can't wait for the rest- I like the door hardware you have chosen.

[melissakd]

One of my good fiends who is a contractor is putting in the door for me

FREUDIAN SLIP OF THE WEEK

MelissaKD

[jharkin]

fiends

FREUDIAN SLIP OF THE WEEK

MelissaKD

WOW. I had to re-read what I wrote about 10 times before I noticed it.

Darn spell checker!!!