…deserve a post of their very own. They are now the most beautiful doors, but it’s taken a real labour of love, because when we bought the house, they definitely weren’t beautiful. In fact, they looked so awful and dilapidated that the intention was to have them re-made.

It was obvious that in their prime, they had been very elegant and exquisitely crafted. I say “they” because they are actually double doors, creating a very grand entrance to our townhouse. But by the time we bought it, they had been very neglected. They’d been painted in a very muddy brown colour on the outside, which had faded and just looked like sludge. They were cracked in places. Parts of the carved decorative motifs were missing. The old door furniture had been allowed to rust and a new lock system had been installed, and looked so out of place. All in all, they were horrible, and definitely not what we wanted for the entrance to our home, but as the house was being renovated and every day more building materials arrived, they weren’t a priority. Until we actually moved in.

It had always been in our heads that the woodwork in the house, including the front door, would be a soft sage green. But once the crittal doors and windows, around the internal courtyard were installed, we started to think about matte black for the external doors and windows. A bit of a departure from our original thoughts, but we loved the black metal work and didn’t really think any other colour would work on the new windows looking down into the courtyard, and this then led us to wonder if black would work on the front door and the windows and shutters at the front of the house. And, the closer we looked at the front doors, the more we realised that with a bit of elbow grease, we maybe wouldn’t need to replace them after all. There were just too many components we loved about them, that we wouldn’t be able to faithfully replicate with new doors. The bolts were just amazing, especially the main horizontal bolt to lock the doors. Like something you’d find on a castle door!

As the inside of the doors were already a very dark brown, almost black colour, we had a feeling it could work, but there was only one way to find out, as we started repairing and painting them internally…

With all of the builders clutter cleared, the new wall and floor tiles installed, the internal doors painted white and a new light shade fitted, we immediately felt that going black was going to be right. The space and the doors were big enough to go bold, and there was no going back.

And we knew we definitely needed to keep that beautiful Hand of Fatima door knocker. Isn’t she beautiful?

We opted for a matte paint, as we felt that anything with a shine might be a too Downing Street, and that was definitely not the look we were hoping for!

With a new house sign, we think our new/old doors are absolutely perfect. They still have signs of their age, which we love, because they have history and even if new doors were made to replicate these, they wouldn’t be quite the same. So, as well as saving a small fortune, we’ve retained an original feature, and having given it a bit of TLC, we’ve hopefully extended the life of these gorgeously elegant doors. Just need to do something about those awful wall tiles now…