Raised and Fielded Panel Door question

[Ian Bond]

Help!!!

I've rescued another door from a skip, and just want to check which way round to hang it. I'll explain.

There are fielded panels on one side only, and the frame also has a beading on this side. On the reverse face of the door, the panels are flat, and the frame in plain with no beading.

My initial thought is that the doors should be hung so that the fancy side of the panels faces into the room, and the plain side is to the hallway / corridor. In other words, the fielded panelled side of the door opens towards you.

No clue from hinges or handle holes, as the door looks as though it's been hung every which way in the past. It's going to need some TLC.

It's probably an obvious answer, but I've agonized over the various details so much that I can't see it!!!!

Just wish I could travel back in time and stop the previous owners from chucking away all the original doors custom made to fit the odd openings in my house. And then fitting horrible modern ones.

 

[Nemesis]

Ours are panelled with mouldings; upstairs the doors are as yours are, the 'posh' sides face onto the staircase, the plain side into the rooms.

Cheapskates.

 

[middi]

Nemesis doors are fitted correctly Ian.

The "attractive" side of the doors ( raised panels, moulding etc..) traditionally should always face corridors, landings, hallways etc.. Usually applicable to Regency, Georgian or Victorian style doors.

The opposite may be true of the more "crude" ledged,ledged/ braced or framed/ledged/braced doors, the ledges or braces considered to be the "rough" side of the door therefore always fitted to face inwards into rooms.

 

[Ian Bond]

Thanks Nemesis and Middi

Hmmm - opposite of what I'd assumed.

On one of the doors, I've had a look at the stile and it looks as though a rim lock was fitted on the 'nice' face, which would imply that the nice face was on the inside of the room. And on the other 'plain' side of the door, someone had later nailed on some beading around the panels to pretty them up. I took the beading off (had been done badly) and there was paint under the beading, showing it wasn't there originally.

This was from a room that must've been turned into a bathroom, judging by the modern bolt on it, also fixed to the fair side. An interesting feature was a false keyhole on the outside, corresponding with an old rimlock. There was an escutcheon plate fixed onto the outside with brass pins, but no corresponding keyhole to allow the lock to be operated from outside the room. I suppose for privacy you wouldn't want the keyhole in the door either.

On the other door, which has had hinges on both stiles at different times, there's a remnant of a hinge showing again the fair face into the room.

So it could be that at some time in the past both these doors have been re-hung incorrectly?

My problem comes with a downstairs room (house body) with 3 doors. One to the entrance hall, another to a cellar and 3rd into a kitchen/scullery extension.

If I hang all these doors with the plain face into the room, they'll all match (good) but the cellar door which is always shut will have a fancy side that will hardly ever been seen. This sounds wrong to me, which going by my experience with old houses probably means that it's right.

Moral of the story - never take the doors off or turn em round!

Thinking about it, next door still have most of their original doors, so when I get a chance I'll have a look to see if they've been re-hung and swapped round.

I am certain that you are both right about the correct orientation of the doors, and it's just that various people have mucked about with them to suit their own preferences over the years.

Ta very much,

Ian

 

[Penners]

There are fielded panels on one side only, and the frame also has a beading on this side. On the reverse face of the door, the panels are flat, and the frame in plain with no beading.

Well done for the rescue, Ian.

The configuration of the door is exactly the opposite of our four-panel Victorian doors. They have the fielding on one side only, like yours, but the decorative beading frames the panels on the other (ie the flat) side. They're all hung with the fielding on the outside and the beading facing into the room.

I particularly like them because the fielding is a little bit crude. Its angle changes a bit here and there. Very obviously hand planed!

 

[Penners]

the cellar door which is always shut will have a fancy side that will hardly ever been seen.

Surely that depends on who's in your cellar....

 

[Ian Bond]

:lol:

That's what I'd like to do to whoever took all me doors off in the first place - lock 'em in the cellar until they repent. (Just kidding)

You can't beat the hand-made look Penners - my fielded panels are a bit like that.

I'd already hung the bathroom door with the fielded panels on the inside. It did have a planted beading on the outside, but I only realised it was a later addition after I'd hung the door. It was badly done with the pins sticking right through the face of the panel on the other side, so I took it all off.

So I've just repeated an earlier 'mistake', judging by the marks left from an earlier rim lock. I'm not going to change it again now, but you live and learn (or not).

Cupboard doors are different again, plain on the inside, and perhaps fielded on the outside, and therefore not matching the room doors that are hung with the plain side facing into the room.

It will be interesting to see how my neighbours doors have been done. Well, interesting to me anyway, now that I have become an anorak of yet another variety - doors!

I think that if I get doors made for the downstairs rooms, I'll either have the panels plain, or else fielded and beaded on both sides, just to make things simpler.

Anyway ,thanks all for the advice - now I know that I should hang my 2nd rescued door with the fielded panels facing the stairs. Just need to repair all the holes and splits, trim it to fit and hang it now. Will post a couple of pics - you never know, there may be fellow 'door anoraks' interested to see what I've done. Or not.

:mrgreen:

Ian

 

[Penners]

I think that if I get doors made for the downstairs rooms, I'll either have the panels plain, or else fielded and beaded on both sides, just to make things simpler.

You may not be entirely happy with the result if you do.

A nicely fielded panel will have a long taper to it - perhaps as much as 2 inches wide - which then levels off to form the tongue that fits into the grooves in the stiles and rails. If you want to field both sides you'll have to reduce the amount of fielding considerably, otherwise your panel will just feather to a sharp edge.

I suppose you could have an extremely shallow fielding angle, or make the whole door thicker, with a thicker panel. But once again, I'm not sure you'd find the end result very pleasing.

 

[Ian Bond]

Thanks Penners. It's something I'll need to consider.

The doors I've got are just 1 inch thick, compared with 1 3/8 for the modern doors. And the fielding width on the old doors ranges from 1 to 1 1/2 inches. One doors raised and fielded, the other just fielded.

The panels on one door are 12 inches wide from a single piece. In the other door each panel is 12 inches wide but made up from 2 to 4 narrower pieces that look to be tongued together. Looks like the last door had been dip-stripped and it's opened up the joints in the frame and panels. The paint's been removed somehow, then it looks as though they decided the end result wasn't worth keeping :evil: Not the finest work by any means, and fairly plain with crude fielding. I reckon it could easily be 200 years old.

I think I need to get my anorak on, get out in the 'field' and have a good look at some panelled doors!

 

[Penners]

Well, just don't forget the pictures, for your fellow door-anoraks. :wink:

 

[Nigel Watts]

One further thought. The modern way of hanging doors is different from the old way. The old way is to have the door hinged so that it blocks your view of the centre of the room as you open it. Modern practice is the oppose. If you have a door which has a "smart" side and a "plain" side and change the hanging from the old way to the new way you will reverse the smart and plain sides (assuming you don't go to the trouble of switching the hinges, lock, handles etc from one side of the door to the other).

This switching was done in the top floor of my house where only servants and children would originally have resided, with the result that that wrong sides (ie the plain sides) now face the staircase, and the smart sides are "wasted" on what would have been their low status incumbents.

Georgian and Victorian houses are rich with hierarchical detail of this kind which I am sure was not entirely down to making points about status. Anyone who has made elaborate mouldings by hand will know that it is hard and time consuming work, so would have cost money. Not preserving these fine distinctions in refurbishment projects (the temptation is often to replace plain with more elaborate) makes the building more difficult to read, which personally I don't like.

 

[Penners]

The old way is to have the door hinged so that it blocks your view of the centre of the room as you open it....Not preserving these fine distinctions in refurbishment projects (the temptation is often to replace plain with more elaborate) makes the building more difficult to read

It also means that the damn butler can spot one in flagrante with the Under Parlour Maid before one has the opportunity to adjust one's dress.

 

[Ian Bond]

Oo-er Penners!

Good point Nigel. Although my current house is humble all over. Just a two-up two-down vernacular cottage, rather than a villa.

The bedroom doors are hung opening into the room, for the reason that Penners mentioned I presume!

This is tricky, as there's no return on the closing side of the frame, as it's butted up against the wall. So the lock staples are recessed in the plaster.

Downstairs they avoided the problem with the lock staple by hanging the doors so they open agains the wall. You can see where the original architrave had been cut to receive the staple, but has since been repaired. I suppose downstairs the privacy issue would not be a problem as much as it was in a bed chamber.

I'll hang the bedroom doors as suggested - opening into the room, with the fielded panels to the stairs / landing.

Downstairs is tricky, as if I have plain panels on the room side, for one door the fielded panel faces the cellar/dungeon steps and on another it faces the kitchen/scullery. On the remaining door the fielded panel would face the entrance door, with the parlour door across from it - that might warrant the fielded panels facing the corridor. But then again, I don't want two doors in the room facing one way, and the third another.

I'll see what the next door neighbours have done, and try to decide which would look best.

Ta

Ian

 

[Penners]

I'll hang the bedroom doors as suggested - opening into the room

Actually Ian, the point isn't just that they open into the room, but that they are also hinged on the side away from the adjacent wall. That way you can't see into the room until the door is fully open.

As I said, it allows a hasty pretence of decency before Jeeves has line-of-sight! :shock:

 

[Ian Bond]

Thanks for the clarification Penners.

That's what I meant, but it may well help anyone else trying to work out what the heck we're going on about!!!

Ian

 

[Penners]

I think the rest of the gang has probably nodded off by now!

 

[Ian Bond]

ZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Oops, nodded off myself for a moment!

 

[middi]

I am the only one that really understood " trigger" :wink:

 

[Nemesis]

Ours open t'other way, so that when open they are flat against the wall.

No sign of them ever opening any other way.

There is a tiny dressing/powder room off the main bedroom though, and oddly the mouldings face into the room, despite the bedroom door itself having no mouldings facing inward.

 

[Nemesis]

Actually, re the under parlourmaid and Penners, (or should that be the under Penners parlourmaid ) ...we will just quote him :

in flagrante

we always though possibly it was to enhance the comfort of the former that this was installed at Tyntesfield:

http://www.savebritainsheritage.org/editorial4-02.htm

the most detailed listing description I have yet encountered as far as interiors go, even mentioning the heated billiard table.

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