Giving Original French Doors a new Lease of Life

This was a small job that I did recently in a beautiful old house that was formally a country hotel. The client had two sets of French Doors that hadn’t worked for a long time and asked if I could fix them.

The doors had broken locks and rack bolt star key security locks that had been badly fitted and had stopped working.

Firstly I removed all the faulty and broken locks, and then, once I had the doors open,  I established where the doors were binding and catching.

I removed each door and trimmed and planed them, so, once rehung they worked effectively.

I then recommended fitting new black surface-mounted cranked bolts as opposed to the rack bolt star key security locks. I felt that they would be more in keeping with the traditional look of the doors and would work more effectively. I pointed out to my client areas on the doors where you could see that in the past that this what had been there.

Finally, I was able to then rout into the doors brush-style draft excluders creating a better seal around the doorframe.

Once all the draft excluders, cranked bolts and new locks had been fitted, the client was really pleased to have these traditional doors working effectively for the first time since they had lived there.