What the supporting structure allows
An overlay reinforcement keeps your door and strengthens it: folded steel sheet over the leaf, angle sections on the frame, a multipoint lock, anti-lift studs. It needs a sound frame. In the stone houses of Le Bourg the anchoring into masonry is excellent, provided the foot of the frame is treated where damp rising from the courtyard has eaten into it.
A complete armoured door is a full assembly, leaf and frame together, fitted in place of the old one. Its resistance no longer depends on the original support, which makes it the sensible answer when the frame is too far gone to keep. In the Beauversant houses everything then rests on how the fixings hold in blockwork or concrete. One test hole tells you more than an hour of discussion.
Old doors in the centre bring a constraint of size. Low, wide, sometimes outside standard dimensions and sitting on a stone threshold, they take badly to catalogue assemblies. Measurements are taken on site before anything is ordered, a worn threshold is made good in the same visit, and the itemised quote comes before the work.
What the outside appearance commits you to
A door opening onto the street or onto a visible courtyard changes the frontage. In the old centre, around the church and the lanes climbing towards it, how the door reads from public space is worth discussing before the finish is chosen. The town planning department will say in one question whether a prior declaration is needed, and a photograph of your door and its neighbours frames the conversation.
If your door falls within the setting of a listed monument, the opinion of the Architecte des Bâtiments de France, the state architect who rules on protected surroundings, may be added to that declaration. This is checked beforehand, not afterwards: a door fitted and then challenged has to come off again.
In a block of flats the entrance door is private property, but its landing face belongs to the common parts. In the Basses-Barolles residences as in the small buildings of the centre, reinforcement that changes the colour or the relief of that face is a matter for the owners’ meeting. The co-ownership rules usually settle it in a single reading.
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 Saint-Genis-Laval.