Questions about door hardware (paint, stairs, color, doors)

[elissam]

This sounds llike a silly question.

My husband and I just had all of the interior doors to our house stripped and refinished. Next, we're having the 100+ year old knobs, backplates, and mortise locks refinished. We don't know what finish to choose.

The issue is in the upstairs hallway. Here, six of the doors meet in a very close space. Is it better for all of these to have the same finish, since they are technically in the same room?

What about the other side of the door? One of the doors in this hallway opens into the bathroom which is black/white/silver nickel. Another opens into the master bedroom which has oil rubbed bronze fixtures. Would it ever be acceptable for different sides of a door to have identical hardware, but in different finishes? If so, what finish should the hinges be in?

Thanks for your help!

[desertsun41]

Good question. Nothing in any of my design books even have advice on locksets. It's rare people refinish or have have them resurfaced since they only cost less then $8.00 each. But in your case you want to keep the old to compliment the home.

All I can add is just before this generation of locksets, the bed/bath locksets were always the same color but the closet locksets were always chrome on the inside. Strange huh. So dont worry about a different color on the inside. But why not just do them all the same whatever color you choose just to make it easier? And whatever color you do the knobs, do the hinges the same.

By the way....what does it cost to resurface old locksets?

[elissam]

I never even thought about refinishing them, until I looked at the cost of replacing them with 100+ year old locksets. With mortise locks, the doors are drilled out differently. In order to fit a modern lock set on the door, we woud have some serious woodwork to do. When I looked at replica mortise locks, their dimensions didn't fit my doors. When we looked at restored locksets, the prices were crazy! I located a dealer who was selling our exact locksets. They were $120/set. So, we called around to local places who refinish metal. For about $65 each, they'll strip all of the paint off, restore them and add whatever finish we want. This is our cheapest option. I think we'll end up going with all he same fiish, just for ease.