French door instead of slideing door (pictures, designs, dining room, house)
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Status:
"Mistress of finance and foods."
(set 24 days ago)
Location: Coastal Georgia
50,052 posts, read 63,405,659 times
Reputation: 92617
I intend to replace a french door with a slider, even though I hate to do it. At another house we had a Pella slider with the blinds enclosed between the glass and it was the perfect solution to the afternoon sun issue. My french door is very nice looking, but I really can't afford to lose the floor space the door swing takes up.
mind if I ask about how much it co$t? and was it a DIY project or you hired someone?
thanks
We hired the contractor down the road. Our costs were very minimal and rare, so don't base it off our cost! We have no permits needed for anything where I am. I've got two neighbors that built their own home from the ground up with not a single permit ever pulled and it's legal. Also, cost of everything here is dirt cheap, so what we paid won't be near what you do I'd guess.
We paid $50 for the install plus the cost of the door, which I've posted a link to below. It's listed as $550 or so, but I think we paid like $480 for ours.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nightcrawler
What about screens, can they be put on a french door?
Yes. They make the screen door to go with the french doors we put up. The only down side is they were sliding screen doors, which took us right back to the whole track issue. We wound up not even having it installed. It's still sitting in our garage in the original packaging.
Quote:
Originally Posted by gentlearts
I intend to replace a french door with a slider, even though I hate to do it. At another house we had a Pella slider with the blinds enclosed between the glass and it was the perfect solution to the afternoon sun issue. My french door is very nice looking, but I really can't afford to lose the floor space the door swing takes up.
That's what we've got. I love them. After replacing the old sliders in the den, we liked it so much we went back and ordered the single door like it, with the huge plate glass and blinds between. Wound up having to custom order two of them, but it was worth it. Love them!
If this were 1985, I'd be saying "Yes!" Get the French Doors. But with Midcentury Modern en-vogue again, I'd say keep the sliding glass, if it works with the style of your house.
And quality/scale are issues, too. If your sliding glass doors are big, expensive ones, they merit appreciation more than standard-issue-from-the-lumber-company jobbies.
The new house we're building will have tall, elegant French Doors, of re-milled salvaged Walnut. But the style is 17th Century French...steep Black Slate roof....Cut Limestone walls....brick floors. The one we're in right now is a "Modernist Masterpiece", and there are a few Sliding Glass Doors (really big ones).
My Decorator picked this house for us, and freshened it up prior to our move. So if Sliding Glass were a bad thing, he would have brought in the original Architect to tweak the design (or would have picked another house). Instead, he just remodeled US (and our furnishings) to match the house. The new neighbors had already popped in and snooped around, while DH, Decorator, and Kids were finishing up with the move-in (I spent a week or so in Aspen, staying out of the way), and by the time I arrived, we'd already been 'A-Listed', the neighborhood liked the new look of the house so much, we just had to be quality people(actually, we were merely walking onto a stage set somebody else had designed). There are wealthy people who've lived here for decades who still are not part of this group (not our fault they don't listen to their Decorators). So again, if there were anything wrong, per se, with French Doors, we would surely still be viewed as gauche outsiders.
It all depends on the style of your house, and whether the doors are nice ones (which have been sited properly).
BTW, Aluminum can be polished until it looks like Silver. I did that with Aluminum doors on a couple of our first homes, and it was wonderful to take depressing, greyed-oxidized metal, and polish it to look like fine old Silver. We didn't have a cent to spare, back then, and it made such a difference. And our Decorator (who's been with us since we were all just poor ragamuffins at a third-rate college in Nowheresville, Mississippi) showed us how to paint old Aluminum doors and windows. Choose the right color, and they look expensive.
Status:
"Mistress of finance and foods."
(set 24 days ago)
Location: Coastal Georgia
50,052 posts, read 63,405,659 times
Reputation: 92617
I get your point, Grandview, but I'm still kind of reeling from the fact that your neighbors are so judgemental. Sounds like a FUN group.
I dare you to have them over for beans and weenies, and processed cheese out of a squirt can, LOL.
I sorta wan here, as Paul Harvey might say, "the rest of the story"...
Transformed from penniless aluminum polishing grind to the Aspen vacationing, re-milled mahogany, track down the original Architect, beats out the old money belle of the ball, all becuase of The Right French Doors...
Quote:
Originally Posted by gentlearts
I get your point, Grandview, but I'm still kind of reeling from the fact that your neighbors are so judgemental. Sounds like a FUN group.
I dare you to have them over for beans and weenies, and processed cheese out of a squirt can, LOL.
i have french doors leading into my apartment, it was a great solution because we needed a main acess door for the livingroom form the outside, but didnt want a house door and needed more light.
the upside, its secure, it looks nice, it opens up the living area of my little 400sqft studio style apartment
i have a deadbolt keyed lock and a proper locking handle on it just like a front door would have
the down side is, it swings inward taking up some space in my very small living area (if i open both doors its lovely in the spring/summer but i have to move things around so the none main door has room to open. (we couldnt go with the ones that swing out 1 because again its a main acess door and coding wouldnt allow it, and 2, the path outside my main door isnt very wide it would have been very arkward)
and i do have a small issue when we get driving rain, the door is hung right, its been checked and everything but theres a tiny gap in the center between the 2 doors where the weather stripping doesnt meet in the middle and when we get rain with the wind pushing it at the door, it does leak.
i think i would go with a sliding door that doesnt look like a slider if i was doing it all again just because we wouldnt have that little gap and it wouldnt take up as much room...
if youce got the space to open either in or out and its at least a little sheltered id go with french though.
There are French doors with what they call sidelights - tall narrow doors with screens - the sidelights open for fresh air while the main doors remain closed.
I have had both sliders and French doors and I prefer the French doors but good quality sliders can look every bit as good as French doors - in fact, some look like French doors.
I get your point, Grandview, but I'm still kind of reeling from the fact that your neighbors are so judgemental. Sounds like a FUN group.
I dare you to have them over for beans and weenies, and processed cheese out of a squirt can, LOL.
Actually they ARE a fun group, and a hyper-intelligent, ultra-progressive group (Centrist, though...not Liberal). If Buckminster Fuller were still alive, he'd probably live just down the street. The Garden Club actually gardens...so nice to dig holes and prune hedges with patent-holding Molecular Biologists: women who don't look alarmed when one refers to the metabolic bi-product of Lichens. At last, I don't have to feel weird for not wearing makeup and not having skanky painted fingernails... or serving Organic Vegan meals...or referencing Malthus, Darwin, Ayn Rand, or Gertrude Stein. Finally, we're in our dream milieu.
But we're from the opposite corner of the continent: and, while we lived in the richest town and county of the state, we are from the poorest and most backward state. My preferred interior look is Le Style Rothschild: Satin; Velvet; Silk Brocatelle; 20-color Italian hand-screened uber-Chintz; big Silk Tassels; heavy Bullion Fringe; Marble floors overlaid with Needlepoint rugs (overlaid with fur rugs); Tortoise Inlay; Gilt Bronze encrusted Scagliola Columns...like an Ingres painting come to life. And while that is standard fare in Madison Mississippi, it tends to be a look that is misunderstood outside Southampton, Park Avenue, and Palm Beach.
The danger was that we would be instantly read as showy/flashy/shallow/clueless/Porsche-driving sleazy zhlubs from nowhere, before anyone got a chance to know us as anything else.
Instead, our Decorator put our pretty things in (museum-level) storage. He had the new home's cushioned Maple floors bleached to scheme with the pale Travertine walls. He re-framed our Mississippi Impressionist paintings in Bleached Maple; temporarily banished our ornate China and Crystal, and only let us use the simpler, more handmade-looking Murano.
Between the five of us, we have enough books to overstock a library: a saving grace as a visual cue, to counterweight our buff bodies. Believe me: those people scrutinized those titles. The fact that there was NOTHING pro-Religion or pro-Sports helped. The fact that there was a preponderance of renegade/forbidden titles in areas of Science and Economics helped still more. Books and paintings got starring roles, subtly highlighted by the newly-refined and unobtrusive system of pinlights/Halogens/LED lighting.
All the furniture had to be spare/cerebral/high-concept: not just Modern, but Modern with a major backstory and multivalent impact. The rooms had to be as minimalist as possible. It worked. No one would have seen past our glitzernde trappings, had we arrived on the West Coast with our florid Gulf Coast Glamour. Basically, we were being repackaged as what we, in our innermost essence, are, stripped of our overcompensatory cocoon.
But the point that is germane to this thread is that SLIDING GLASS DOORS ARE NOT SOMETHING OF WHICH TO BE ASHAMED. They're modern miracles, reemerging from a period of being under-appreciated. For as long as Midcentury Modern is retro-chic, they are back in style.
And when you grew up, as I did, in a Tarpaper shack without running water, owning your first home, with a real sliding glass door, is an indescribable thrill (even if is just one unit in your first apartment building, in an off-campus slum, and you're gradually scraping off the grime, and gradually upgrading your tenants), and polishing that cheap Aluminum frame, until it looks like fine silver, is a joy beyond words.
Oh, and the neighbors do pop in for Soup, Salad, and Toast all the time. As Vegetarians, we serve loads of Beans. The Scientists and CEOs sort of segue in and out of the kids' study groups. They're casual...we're casual...
Would it look bad if I install french door instead of sliding door leading from the formal dining room to the patio? I know most people have door leading out from the kitchen, but I don't think we have enough space.
Would it look bad? Heck no! French doors would look great in a formal dining room!
Sliding doors are ugly almost anywhere, but sliders would be especially ugly in a formal dining room.
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