What the frame and the staircase allow
Steel cladding keeps your door and strengthens it: a folded plate over the leaf, angle sections on the frame, a multipoint lock, anti-lift pins. It is never better than what it is fixed to. On an old village frame the timber is probed before anything is proposed, because a jamb eaten from within will not hold the fixings on the day somebody leans on it.
A full armoured set replaces everything, leaf and frame together. It performs better, but it still has to reach the landing. In the narrow winding staircases of village houses, as in the small lift-free blocks at the lower end of Cuire, measuring the way up matters as much as measuring the opening.
At Montessuy the question changes. The masonry of the 1960s blocks holds fixings extremely well, but the openings sometimes carry dimensions that are no longer standard, and the landings are cramped. The opening, the wall thickness and the hand of the door are all recorded before either solution is ruled out, because a set ordered to the wrong dimensions cannot be adjusted on the landing.
How the door looks is not always yours to decide
In a block of flats the face onto the corridor is seen by everyone, and the building's rules often govern it: colour, material, handle, lot number. On the Montessuy estates as in the small blocks at Vassieux, a question put to the managing agent before ordering saves taking down brand-new cladding.
For a village house whose door opens onto the street, appearance is a planning matter. The area has protected buildings — starting with the maison du docteur Dugoujon on the place Jean-Gouailhardou, where Jean Moulin was arrested in June 1943 — and altering a frontage that falls within a protected setting can require consent. The town's planning department will tell you what applies at your address.
One plain point remains: cladding protects an opening, not a home. In a Vassieux house set in a walled garden, the living-room patio door and the service door stay the weak link if nothing is done there. Consistency across the whole property counts for more than performance at a single point, and a street door in the village is rarely the only way into the house behind it.
How does this service work?
Techniques, typical situations, standards and things to watch out for: it is all on our door reinforcement page. This page focuses on what the service involves in Caluire-et-Cuire.