external door ideas

cheesesarnie

Hi...have an unusual (i think) layout of semi with 2 sets of old wooden external french doors each witha window each side + each are the width of the rooms with 2 ft high dwarf walls below the window elements. Both need replacing.

2 questions :

1) I've had a quote for standard upvc replacements but believe there might be better alternatives, hopefully within a simlar price range as upvc...anyone got any suggestion/web links/pictures?

2) Should I get rid of the dwarf walls & make the windows either side full length?...i'm not sure if that would be an improvement or not.

thanks for help

Doozergirl

Lose the dwarf walls and have folding sliding doors instead.

These are uPVC but are a great price. I've just bought and installed some
http://www.slideandfold.co.uk/

cheesesarnie

thanks for link...not sure I'm a fan in our situation....the £600 fitting amount looks a bit painful if we went for 1 door!

albeit, interested how they compare price wise to upvc french doors

thanks again

Doozergirl

The fitting would be for the whole thing - ie if you had four doors the fitting cost is for the whole thing.

Those doors are really cheap and come out at around the same as regular PVC doors. We have usual supplier for uPVC windows and doors and based on his quotes for folding sliders, we ended up having one set of windows with french doors from him first in order to save money and then buy the other set separately.

As it turned out, once I'd done all the research and discovered these people, the cost would have been almost exactly the same. We now have two sets of doors which aren't the same but cost the same. If I'd have realised at the time then I would have had two sets of folding sliding, which was the original plan.

They shouldn't cost any more to fit than any other kind of door and window We actually used the guy that fitted all the other windows so it cheaper than their price.

In fact, we bought our front door from them as well and it was unbelievably cheap.

dander

I think it will depend a lot on the style of semi and your own style. Personally I'm not a fan of the whole wall of windows look and prefer something a bit more characterful, which your dwarf walls sound like to me. For my taste I don't like to see the giant doors in anything older than 1960s and it breaks my heart a little to see older-style houses with that kind of thing done.

As far as materials go, it would also depend on what is in your other windows - if you've got original wooden sashes elsewhere, I would personally try to match that with wooden windows at the rear, rather than upvc replacements which I think would jar. That said, you can get some very nice upvc windows and the price doesn't seem to differ a lot between the good-looking and the ugly, so it's worth shopping around.

cheesesarnie

cheers all..

actually its a dam ugly looking 1966 semi + the rest of the windows are poor so they're getting replaced by white upvc which will look loads better (thats coming from someone whos not a massive fan of upvc)...

i not 100% that my upvc firm that I 've got a good relationship with have got the most cost efficient/innovative products when it comes to feature doors so thats where i'm looking for the ideas...like you dander, I'm not 100% that I'm into that wall of glass thing...but I'll look closely at the link and see what I can see..

thanks for advice