October 2010 – New glass doors

The (old) front door was the last door/window to be replaced in the house. The height was around 5′ 10″ so anyone over that (and that includes me) was liable to clout your head if you were not careful. So not only did the door have to go as it had the sealing/insulation properties of a sieve it was dangerous!

With Bens help we started work on the Tuesday morning with the objective of completing the work in four days…..

Before we started:

To limit the dust going into the house I built a frame and covered it with a tarpaulin. This actually worked very well, not 100% but very close:

The old door were lifted off and the glass removed from above. The beam between the doors and the glass came out with hardly any forcing, we couldn’t see what had held it in place for the last hundred plus years!

  

We decide to build a strong block wall either side, tied into the existing stonework:

  

In order to make the hole wider to fit the slightly larger door we had to remove the utility sink and cupboard:

  

Having removed the sink and plaster we discovered the old original sink and decided that the brick and stonework was not up to standard!

  

So we strengthened the walls with new block work, this unfortunately reduced the size of the cupboard but at least the wall won’t fall down.

  

We then widened the hole ready for another block work pillar and to replace the lintel with a new oak beam:

  

With the old lintel out the lintel hole was enlarged:

  

And the new lintel fitted (perfectly):

  

Allowing the door to be fitted the next day:

  

There is still plastering and electrical work to be done inside but the new door has made a huge difference to the light in the room and to the heat retention, especially overnight.

 

  

We are very pleased with the end result. We plan to put stone around the door frames in the spring.

 

And the job took…. 4 days. For once we were on schedule, but it did take another day to take all the rubbish to the dump.

Thanks to Ben for his help!