Reinforce what is there, or replace the whole set
Retrofit armouring keeps your door and clads it: folded steel sheet on the leaf, angle irons on the frame, a multipoint lock, anti-lift pins. The original joinery stays, which matters in the blocks of central Givors where the flat door has been part of the staircase for ever. On those landings the colour and the mouldings are discussed as much as the steel.
An armoured door set is a complete unit — leaf, frame, lock, hinges — fitted in place of the old one. Its resistance does not depend on the quality of the existing support, which makes it the answer when the frame of an old Givors flat door is too far gone to carry anything.
The sorting is done on site. Retrofit armouring fitted to a rotten frame or to a plasterboard lining will not deliver what is expected of it: the force of a break-in passes into the fixings, so into the substrate. From one Givors district to the next that substrate has nothing in common. Nothing is priced before the frame and the wall behind it have been probed.
From the concrete at Les Vernes to the oblique reveals of Les Étoiles
At Les Vernes the 1960s flats are built with concrete shear walls lined with light partitions. The anchor sits behind the lining, not in the board: you find the structure before drilling. The landings there were sized for furniture, which weighs on getting a complete door set up the stairs. A narrow lift, or none at all, sometimes settles the choice on its own.
At Les Étoiles, Renaudie's geometry complicates the survey: reveals that are not square, oblique returns, thresholds sitting at different levels from one flat to the next. A catalogue door set stops at standard sizes; in that estate a made-to-measure unit is often the only workable route. The survey takes longer than elsewhere, and it governs everything that follows.
In the centre the stairwells are narrow and turn tightly, and the appearance of a flat door is a matter for the co-ownership before it is a matter for a locksmith. On a house at Bans the question moves to the gate and the side door, both crossed well before the front door. Reinforcing the way onto the plot before the house itself often makes more sense.
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 Givors.