Project Journal · York
Three York front doors, one week.
Every week is a bit different in the workshop. Sometimes a job is one big door on one big house. Other times three separate customers all land in the diary on the same week and every one is a proper piece of work. That's what this week looked like — three bespoke timber entrance doors in three different York streets, all installed inside seven days.
All three are Accoya, all three are factory-finished, all three are fitted with multi-point locking, adjustable hinges, full draught seals and our 30-year insurance-backed guarantee. What changes house to house is everything the customer sees — the panels, the glazing pattern, the colour, the ironmongery. Here's each one in turn.
House one · York
The arched 6-panel with radial fanlight.
A Victorian red-brick terrace with a beautiful brick arch over the doorway — the sort of front you see all through the streets south of the city walls. The customer wanted a proper period door with a radial fanlight above, in a deep matt black that would set off the brickwork rather than fight it.
We drew the panel layout as a traditional 6-panel — two square panels top, two long panels middle, two square panels bottom — with the fanlight glazing bars fanning up into the arch to match the geometry of the brickwork. Furniture is chrome with a lever handle on the outside, so it opens like a modern door but reads like a Victorian one.
- Timber: Accoya, factory-finished in matt black
- Layout: 6-panel arched door with radial arched fanlight
- Furniture: brushed chrome lever, letterplate and knocker
- Glazing: toughened A-rated double glazing in the fanlight
House two · York
The navy cottage-bar door.
A completely different look. Same city, different street, different era of house — and this customer wanted glass, not panels. The design is a fully glazed door with a traditional cottage-bar pattern: a grid of small square lights across most of the door face, with a solid rail across the bottom for the letterbox.
Cottage bars are one of those details that has to be drawn properly — every bar the same width, every square the same size, spacing perfectly even. Done right they look effortless. Done casually they look like a suggestion. Ours are proper through-tenoned bars, not stick-on strips, so the pattern reads correctly on both sides of the glass.
The colour is a deep, slightly muted navy. On this street of pale stone and cream renders it draws the eye without being loud. Chrome lever handle, matching letterplate — clean, understated, current.
- Timber: Accoya, factory-finished in dark navy
- Layout: fully glazed with 15-light cottage-bar pattern, solid bottom rail
- Furniture: brushed chrome lever and letterplate
- Glazing: obscured double glazing behind each light for privacy
House three · York
The arched 6-panel with brass fittings.
The third house of the week — another arched Victorian doorway, this time with the customer wanting brass rather than chrome. Brass takes a period entrance in a warmer direction — it reads Georgian-adjacent, a bit softer, a bit more country than city.
The door itself is another arched 6-panel — because the door has to follow the arch that's already in the brickwork — but this time in a deeper matt black with a satin sheen rather than a full matt finish. That's the kind of tiny call that changes how a door reads in the North Yorkshire light. Above the door, the customer had a traditional carriage lantern already in place; the new door was designed to sit under it as though the two had been specified together.
Brass letterplate, brass escutcheon, brass thumb-turn — all solid brass, not plated. On a heritage entrance the ironmongery is the first thing the eye lands on and the last thing you touch on the way in. It's worth doing properly.
- Timber: Accoya, factory-finished in satin black
- Layout: 6-panel arched door, matched to the brick arch
- Furniture: polished solid brass — letterplate, escutcheon, lever handle
- Extras: designed to sit beneath the existing carriage lantern
Three houses, one workshop.
What ties these three together isn't the design — the designs are deliberately different. It's what's underneath. Every one of these doors came out of the same workshop in Sherburn in Elmet, went through the same drawings, the same joinery, the same two-part factory paint system and the same install team. Every one has:
- Accoya timber — 50-year above-ground rot warranty from the manufacturer
- Factory paint — primed, undercoated and topcoated in controlled conditions, not on the doorstep
- Multi-point locking with anti-snap cylinders — insurance-approved
- Full compression draught seals — so the hallway actually stays warm
- Adjustable hinges — for fine-tuning over the years as the house settles
- 30-year HomePro insurance-backed guarantee — with a 10-year workmanship warranty on top
The customer picks the look. We take care of everything you don't see.
"Three totally different doors, three streets apart, all fitted in the same week. That's a good week."
Thinking about a new front door in York?
We work across York and the surrounding villages every week — Fulford, Bishopthorpe, Heworth, Clifton, Dringhouses, and everywhere in between. Every job starts with a free on-site survey and a fixed itemised quote, so you know exactly what you're getting and what it costs before we start.
If you've been looking at your front door and thinking it's time — or you've bought a period property and want a door that suits the house — we'd be glad to come and have a look.
| Location | Three houses across York |
| Property types | Victorian red-brick terraces |
| Products | Bespoke arched 6-panel doors ×2, cottage-bar glazed door ×1 |
| Timber | Accoya throughout — factory finished |
| Colours | Matt black, satin black, dark navy — two-part paint system |
| Ironmongery | Brushed chrome (×2) and polished brass (×1) |
| Guarantees | 30-year HomePro IBG · 10-year workmanship · 50-year Accoya |
| Lead time | Approx. 8 weeks from survey to install |
Thinking about a new front door?
We survey across York, Harrogate, Leeds, Wetherby, Boston Spa and everywhere in between. Free on-site survey, fixed itemised quote, no pressure.