LPC-Approved Door Maker?
Does anyone know what manufacturers and makes are approved by Landmarks for brownstone entry doors? We are only considering replacing our ugly door if we can purchase doors that are energy efficient—double panes and low e glass…… Thanks.
Does anyone know what manufacturers and makes are approved by Landmarks for brownstone entry doors? We are only considering replacing our ugly door if we can purchase doors that are energy efficient—double panes and low e glass……
Thanks.
Arkady, a salvage door is great for the interior or maybe for the rear facade, but for the front door, the commission is going to want nothing less than an accurate reproduction of the original door. That’s it. It isn’t complicated. The design for the new doors can be copied from a neighbor that retains the historic door (no, not the neighbor with the Home Depot door). The door will be more expensive than an off the shelf door but it will fit the opening perfectly and it will be gorgeous. If you can’t afford gorgeous right now, wait a year or two, they won’t make you take the existing door down. But really, a beautiful door is so worth it. Why nickel and dime that? This is the blog where people look their noses down on granite kitchen counters and top of the line American appliances. A beautiful front door would be more important to me as a home owner than a German wine refrigerator or one of those turbo-burner stoves.
You might want to look at salvage doors. Craig’s List sometimes has them & there are companies that have fluctuating inventory.
Unfortuntaly we have a terrible home depot off the shelf type of door now, so there is nothing to repair. This is door that came with the house when we bought it and according to the tax photos has been here for quite a while.As for the original doors on the block, they are typical rectangular entry doors and are not very elaborate at all…
Thanks for the info. We plan on doing everything via the correct route so we will follow up with LPC with photos and a few options.
To clarify, as tinarina said, LPC can force you replace a door if it was installed without permits. If its grandfathered, though, you can keep it and repair it.
LPC does not have pre-approved windows or doors, nor do they have pre-approved fabricators. Though many fabricators/installers will tell you they are “landmarks approved”, such a thing does not exist.
To say that LPC will never allow a non-custom door is also incorrect. However, each case is different, and it depends on what is there now, what was there historically, and what you propose to install.
LPC cannot force you to replace a door, however if you want to replace a door, you need LPC to approve the new door. If you have a decrepit non-historic door, you could repair it – if you had to replace it, LPC would require that it be historically appropriate.
I’m not landmarked. I had a great connversation with southslope about redoing my entryway but in the end I didn’t want to spen that amount of money to bring it back to original. If my house was going to be worth $3MM or so in the near future, it would be worth it. The casing work that was there was really well done with fluted pilasters, the door was crap.
So, I replaced the modern door with this door from this place in Maine. Would this pass LPC, I don’t know.
Some of the others with square top windows might.
http://www.archantiquities.com/doors/26068053Photos%20021.jpg.php
They may allow the Jeld-Wen door if the house had a simple square-head, wood and glass door like that originally. Most late nineteenth century brownstones have more elaborate front doors.
So they wouldn’t approve a Jeld-Wen door like this?:
http://www.jeld-wen.com/attributes/universal_large_image.cfm/attribute_id/6411/property_id/34596
Is this considered custom?
If they want me to match my neighbors I can buy a $100 home depot door with a fan light at the top!
I think the LPC can only force/fine you if there’s an existing violation for the door. And we didn’t spend 10k, but it is easy to spend that much. And you can save a lot of money if you can refurbish/retrofit a salvage door.