Gubu.ie

Pending the creation of a dedicated Architecture forum this future craft project comes with a little brain-teaser for ye to think about:

I've just bought myself a new front door. New to me, that is; the door itself is probably about 100-150 years old. Solid wood, with two beautiful cast-iron grilles. And no glass.



Here's the question: why is there no glass? More to the point, why was there never any glass, nor even any provision for glazing the openings? In this regard, the door's construction would have been considered perfectly normal for the time. The ironwork is the full thickness of the door (3.5cm and frikking h..e..a..v..y )

No googling!

Maybe it would be used with shutters or a second door in winter and in summer for the cooling breezes and keeping cats and ducks out. It's a lovely door.

What a pleasant greeting, thanks CelticRambler.
I've no idea why they were never glazed. I have seen similar unglazed doors in Italy that just had curtain material behind wrought iron metal work, that would be internal but not front doors, so unless your very nice doors are a set of them, then I'm sorry i don't know why they're unglazed.
I'm extremely jealous btw.

It was never intended for glass in the first place, as its not a door for keeping out weather.
More like a courtyard or garden entrance door.

So whats my prize??

Its possible to add glass to the construction of course, if thats your goal.

kadman wrote: ↑Mon Feb 13, 2023 9:42 pm It was never intended for glass in the first place, as its not a door for keeping out weather.
More like a courtyard or garden entrance door.

So whats my prize??

Oooh, close, very close ... but missing one detail. Definitely someone's "front door" and (only) in an urban setting, but not the entrance to either a courtyard or a garden.

kadman wrote: ↑Mon Feb 13, 2023 9:43 pm Its possible to add glass to the construction of course, if thats your goal.

The only way to add glass to the door in its current configuration would be in the form of a panel of secondary glazing (which is, as it happens, what a previous interim owner did) Apart from the metalwork being flush with the main elements of the door, there's a moulding around it on both the internal and external faces (the external one is about 1cm thick). Taking that off would - or removing the ironwork - would destroy the look, which is what I paid for! [100€]

However, it is my goal to render it air and water-tight - by adding a whole other door to the back of it. This one is 5cm narrower than the current door/doorway, but I scavenged a perfect, if rather ugly, match from a friend. I'll get hold of some suitably sized double glazing for that one, then fuse it to the back of the new one to create the kind of hefty door that the house deserves. Will also change the sense in which it opens, and (have to) build an entirely new frame, so it'll be a job for more than one wet Wednesday afternoon.

It is a lovely door

Thats definitely a thread for woodworking then

That's lousy CR.
Showing them the door so soon.

kadman wrote: ↑Tue Feb 14, 2023 9:15 am Thats definitely a thread for woodworking then

Oh, dunno. The last time I introduced a bit of metal to the woodworking forum, I was almost excommunicated!

CelticRambler wrote: ↑Tue Feb 14, 2023 11:17 am Oh, dunno. The last time I introduced a bit of metal to the woodworking forum, I was almost excommunicated!

Yeah, but you will actually be using some timber this time around, as you will have to make a false door on the existing to hold the glass.

I dont have the powers to remove you like I could on t'other forum.

Come to think of it I never did it their either. I'm just too nice for power tripping.
So get the thread up and going...

kadman wrote: ↑Tue Feb 14, 2023 11:21 am Yeah, but you will actually be using some timber this time around, as you will have to make a false door on the existing to hold the glass.

kadman wrote: ↑Tue Feb 14, 2023 11:23 am ISo get the thread up and going...

It shall be done ...

... but not for a while yet. I'm trying to be ruthlessly efficient, finishing jobs that should have been finished ages ago before embarking on anything new. And now that winter is almost over, I can probably survive without a weatherproof front door for another year (excessive packaging bubble wrap is great stuff, you know).

I've been thinking about this on and off, and still can't think of a good reason your front door was designed to not have glass.

I even tried cheating by reverse image searching it, but all that done was give me an indication
that your door might be of French origin.

Did the person who it was made for have a particular profession . . that it required no glass?

Au contraire ! It was the building that required it to have no glass - just like the building next door, and the one after that, and every other building on the street.

The logic is not very far removed from what you saw in Italy, with a dash of bourgeois one-up-manship thrown in. Like for the peasantocracy in Ireland, what really mattered in Life was road frontage - no point having a very sellable daughter or three if you had to entertain prospective suitors in a dingy parlour, so middle-income homeowners would do everything to maximise the value of the walls facing the street and/or the courtyard.

Given that there would almost always be a courtyard associated with the house (generally shared with several neighbours), the best place to put the main entrance was on the side of the house. Although some skinnier buildings were built with the rooms in enfilade - where one leads on to the next - beyond a certain depth, it was necessary to have a corridor, and especially if the rooms on one side were sold to/rented to/used by a different family to those on the other.

These corridors were typically very prone to damp during the cold months of the year, so needed a lot of ventilation. Conversely, come the summer, all those glorious windows would transform the main rooms into furnaces, and a stream of cool/fresh air was needed. Sometimes this could be managed with an unglazed fanlight, but if one could find the soux, a door with a good solid cast-iron grill was not only more attractive to look at, but also let a lot more air in while shut and keeping the malfaiteurs out.

Next time you're wandering around the less touristy parts of a French grande ville, have a look at the building façades, and - if you're in the right quartier - notice how few of them have doors facing the street. Where there are doors, you'll often see traces of where the original vented fanlight has been blocked up in the course of later renovation. This was common when central heating became fashionable, and quelle surprise allowed the previously well-managed damp problem to rage out of control.