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bpollen

Entry door style for

bpollen
10 years ago

I have what a realtor might call a 'charming cottage.' It's not so charming, but it does have SOME charm to it, and the style might pass for cottage (beige brick, white trim & shutters, white columns on porch, scroll work on front eaves). It's a 1953 rectangular house with a high pitched roof & small front porch.

In getting a new entry door, I have to watch costs, since I'm going to try to sell in the spring. I'm getting a fiberglass door with no glass. I can go with the traditional 6 panel (the one with the 2 smaller panels at top), but they're so common that I sort of don't want to go with that.

What I think would look good but still cost efficient is called a 2 panel plank. I'm attaching link to pic of that. But I wonder if that's getting too cutesy? (the hinges & handleset will be bronze). (I could also get that style w/o planks, but the planks are in keeping with the porch; my porch has a plank ceiling.)

I'll post a second post with the 2nd one I'm considering, which is a style that was common in the 50's - the 5 panel door where panels are horizontal rectangles. This is kinda funky. I like it, but am not sure how others would view it, since they wouldn't necessarily know that style is from the era in which the home was built.

Any suggestions as to which you think you'd find acceptable or nice enough, if you were looking to buy, would be much appreciated.

Here is a link that might be useful:

Comments (14)

  • bpollen
    Original Author
    10 years ago

    Here's the five panel style from the 50's and earlier.

    Here is a link that might be useful:

  • bpollen
    Original Author
    10 years ago

    Here's a real pic of the 2 panel (without planks, but otherwise pretty much the same).

    Here is a link that might be useful:

  • bpollen
    Original Author
    10 years ago

    No opinions at all?

  • chibimimi
    10 years ago

    Without seeing a pic of your house, my first choice would be the plank 2-panel, second would be the smooth 2-panel. The five-panel looks a little too MCM or like an interior door.

    Could we see the exterior of your home?

  • bpollen
    Original Author
    10 years ago

    I'll give this a try. It's a png file, so don't know if it'll work.

    I don't know if you can tell, but there is scroll work underneath the front eaves, a white picket fence on the porch, columns. What you can't see (porch is covered by full Spring flush of trees) is that the porch is finished in white planks.

    Excuse the junky yard. This is from Google, and apparently they snapped a pic during spring cleaning time.

  • bpath
    10 years ago

    All three are pretty doors, but I think I like the 2-panel arch w/o planks. The planks look more country-cottagey than I think your house is and there's already so many strong verticals going on; and the 5-panels hold the house back in the 50s.

    Cute house! Good luck with your preparations for the market :)

  • live_wire_oak
    10 years ago

    I would call that a ranch, not a cottage. And as such, all of the cutesy cottage doesn't really look appropriate to the rest of the home's bones. Have you limbed up the trees so you can actually see the front door? Paying extra for a charming door that isn't visible wouldn't be tops on my list of things to do before selling. A nice basic door in a pretty color, like maybe a blue lavender or grass green, with the trees trimmed to see it would be more cost effective and charming. And paint the garage doors out to be the body color of the house.

  • bpollen
    Original Author
    10 years ago

    Thanks for all your suggestions!

    Yes, I'm going to trim the trees up. I planted the tree myself some years ago and was waiting until the base got really established and large before trimming bottom limbs. But then I got too busy at work and let it go.

    I hadn't thought of painting the garage doors to match the house. I'll give that some thought.

    I think the 2 panel arch w/o planks might look nice, as a couple of you suggested. Keeping it simple, but still a cottage-y look.

    Ooooh....lavender would be pretty, wouldn't it? Not sure if I'm that bold, but I'll think about it. Red doors are my favorite (and that is one of my decorating colors inside), but I think it's too bold for the soft color of the exterior brick. I could paint it lavender, and if I don't like it, paint it white.

    Thanks so much!

  • jackieblue
    10 years ago

    What style are your garage doors? Personally I wouldn't use the arch topped (planks or not) door if the garage doors are not the same style. And the shutters? If I were looking at buying a home I wouldn't buy one where I would need to replace the garage doors to make the house appear to be of one style, and I wouldn't want to go through the trouble of replacing a brand new front door to make it match the old garage doors. So I just plain wouldn't get past your front door to even look at the house.

    This post was edited by jackieblue on Sat, Nov 9, 13 at 13:20

  • bpollen
    Original Author
    10 years ago

    I hadn't thought that the front door has to exactly match the garage doors. The shutters are white plank. The garage doors have square multiple panels, with horizontal planks above them as headers. The front porch has a plank ceiling. There is some sort of paneling painted white on some walls in the house. And I'm doing the new kitchen backsplash in white beadboard planking. (It's not as much planking as it sounds; it's subtle, but there's a continuity in a little planking here and there throughout the house.) So planking on the front door seems natural. In the fiberglass door I've selected (therma tru), the white plank door in Classic Craft Canvas comes only with a subtle arch at the top. It's not a full round top on the planking; it's an arch. So I don't have a choice, really, in that. And I think the planking blends well enough for continuity, since the garage doors are traditional and not unusual (like, say, Craftsman style).

    Another poster did suggest painting the garage doors to blend with the house, to point attention to the porch and entry way, which I think I might do.

    If a potential buyer insists on everything matching, they probably wouldn't be interested in my house or my subdivision, anyway. This is an old "within the loop" city neighborhood, with some eclectic homes and a spattering of McMansions. The only ones that have matching this and that are the McMansions, which are new, and some of the homes that were "flipped." It's an interesting neighborhood, though, in that the homes were built at different times and were originally custom, so some look the same, but some are very different...but all are old styles from the early 50s (mine) to the early 60s.

    I didn't know there were so many things to think about when fixing a house up to sell it! Lots to think about. Such good advice here in this forum. I had never thought about the garage doors.

  • bpollen
    Original Author
    10 years ago

    I checked out garage and entry doors while doing my morning walk yesterday. I saw maybe over 100 houses that had visible garages. Out of those, looked like 2 or 3 had matching garage and entry doors. So that is apparently a thing that is not done in my area, whether it's the subdivision or the city I don't know.

    Another poster above said that my house looked like a ranch. I wanted to clarify that the style is actually more like traditional. It incorporates different other styles. It's not a true ranch (a wide, sprawling home with a low roof line), but it's not a true craftsman (altho it has some of those features), and it's not a true cottage (altho it has some of those features. The architecture is traditional, while the "styling" is cottage, I think, what with the original white planking all over the place, very high roof line (I have as much sf in my attic as in the house below), custom wood shutters in all the windows that appear to be original, etc.

    But in any case, a person can decorate for a certain style, whether the architecture is that style or not, as long as it doesn't look out of whack.

  • mag77
    10 years ago

    Here's my two cents. The front door doesn't have to match the garage doors, get the two panel in the smooth finish, keep it simple, don't force a particular style on prospective buyers. Paint the garage doors so they don't stand out and make the house look like an auto repair shop. Cut off the tree limbs until you can see the gutters from the street. Cover up the scalloped fascia board if you don't do anything else - just tack a 1x4 over it and slap on some paint - it'll work wonders. Hope this helps.

  • jackieblue
    10 years ago

    Please note that I did not indicate everything had to match, that would probably be impossible unless you could somehow source original materials. But I do believe the style should be the same. For instance if your garage doors are craftsman styled don't put a cottage door in the entrance. Mixed styles just make a place look like whoever did it didn't care. So would you buy a house if you thought the previous owner didn't care about it?

  • bpollen
    Original Author
    10 years ago

    Thanks for all the responses. This has been a learning experience. As far as mixed styles for the garage, jackieblue, yes, I saw some a couple of houses where the garage and entry door styles were so different they didn't seem to go together. One had craftsman garage doors, with the cute glass squares at the top, while the entry door was fancy with curved molding and oval leaded glass in it. Both were nice separately, but didn't go together at all.

    One interesting house I saw on my evening walk last night was a new McMansion close to being finished. It has planked stained garage doors, and plank very nice entry door. BUT the garage doors have cross wood pieces on them (you know that style with dutch style cross pieces on the bottom half), while the entry door was similar to the one I was looking at - a planked square panel at the bottom but an arched planking panel on the top 3/4th. It would look better if the garage doors didn't have the cross pieces on them and were just straight planking, or if the garage doors had an arch. Still, I assume an architect and designer knew what they were doing.

    So I gather from all my viewings is that the pieces of the house have to blend together, have continuity, esp in style, but don't necessarily have to match exactly.

    This has been a learning experience. I never noticed the styling of garage doors before. I did see a few garage doors painted the color of the brick, and while I don't like, say, beige garage doors, it did seem to draw the eye to the different-colored entry area and away from the big garage doors.

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