On Victorian Door Construction

You wouldn’t think that door construction would be a subject of much interest. And yet… When you think about it, you take it for granted nowadays that there’ll be two handles, one each side, and a hidden mechanism. At least that’s how it’s evolved anyway. It’s all nicely standardized now too – you can use a wood drill (the sort of V shaped one) to hollow out a hole for the mechanism, then another one at right angles to make a hole for the spindle (the bit that both handles fit onto). Simples.Living in a Victorian house though, you can see how things have evolved. When we moved in to our new place, a lot of the doors were smooth and quite thick. This implied that they were so-called solid doors, where there’s a narrow frame right around the edges, filled in with wood chip. It’s a very inelegant and heavy construction method, but strong. We used to have one in our old house – clearly a very security conscious guy used to live there as it had 4 deadbolts in it. I’m not quite sure what he was expecting…

Anyway, M started tapping on these doors in our new place and bits of them sounded hollow. She reckoned there were original Victorian doors under a thin layer of plywood. I of course didn’t believe it – why on earth would someone do that…?

But after a bit of persuasion I was willing to give it a go and investigate, so a very small amount of tapping with my trusty wood chisel, and off popped two entire, door-shaped panels of plywood, revealing a proper 4-panel Victorian door underneath, complete with the shadow where the original lock would have been.My only guess is that the 1960s and 1970s were strange times. The people living here before us were here for 40 years, and I guess they covered up the doors in the name of ‘modernisation’.

So this weekend, I spend Saturday afternoon finishing and repairing one of these doors. This involved a trip to my favourite hardware store Wickes to pick up some 34mm pine to finish the edging. Thankfully I didn’t have to take the door off the hinges (it can be a real adventure re-hanging a door…) and it all worked fine with a bit of Wickes wood filler too. Sanded down and with a first coat of paint courtesy of M, the door is looking more like it's meant to be there rather than a Victorian remnant to be covered over. Very pleased. It's good to be able to reinstate some period stuff - I always reckon you're not so much the owner of a Victorian house, more a custodian...

Oh, and a final bit about Victorian door construction - you always had a mechanism on the outside of the door as in the picture, rather than drilled into it. I guess doors were thinner and it was just easier that way. Anyway so called 'rim locks' as they are known are quite hard to come by now - tucked away on the shelves where people don't look so much.

Wickes be warned - I'll be back for more rim locks for the other 5 doors that need them! Phew...

And who would have thought I'd ever write an entire blog post about doors...