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Remodeling Design Dilemma Before & After

Help! I can't choose a finish for our door hardware. My head hurts!

4 years ago

last modified: 4 years ago

Hello lovely helpful Houzz community. We are in the middle of a full house reno and I'm stuck on our new door hardware.

The house is a gabled low-set post-war weatherboard home. We are renovating the original home in a mix of traditional and contemporary (traditional/colonial skirting, doors, cornices and architraves throughout, a hamptons/farmhouse style kitchen, with contemporary ensuite and bathroom). Once we've completed the original part of the house, we will be adding a contemporary extension. The outside house colours are Colorbond Surfmist and Monument, with black front door and entry gate, and the new contemporary extension will be in Monument.

We have chosen polished brass hardware for our front door, our kitchen has polished nickel fittings and tapware, our ensuite has chrome and white tapware and chrome fittings, and our bathroom will have brushed raw/living brass tapware and fittings.

I am lost now trying to choose the right finish for our interior doors. The doors are all off the one hallway leading to the bedrooms, bathroom and linen cupboard. Other than that, we will also be installing mudroom style cabinets in the entry (with handles of some description) which will be directly off the front door (which has brass hardware).

Do we put brass (or even antique brass?) throughout? Or polished nickel to tie in with the nickel and chrome in the kitchen and ensuite? I like the idea of a darker colour to compliment the white colonial doors, but I'm more concerned with flow. Any and all suggestions and advice will be so much appreciated. I am past the stage of mental burnout and so afraid of stuffing it up and our home becoming too "eclectic". I've attached some photos in case it helps. Thanking you in advance!

Featured Answer

Audrey1967!

4 years ago

Have you got an external picture of the current house and the look of the contemporary extension. My postwar has those same existing antique brass door knobs...I too, am doing some renos and am wondering whether to replace all door knobs or just the new ones. I guess even in the original postwar weatherboards, they had chrome in the kitchen and bathroom and then antique brass on all door wear. Not sure what bedroom cupboards originally had. Are you planning to change the plain doors and their antique brass fittings or leave as is, or just change the fittings on the door and keep the plain door? Are you saying that the hamptoms/farmhouse look won't be used at all in the contemporary edition. In the kitchen the thing on the wall looks a darker colour than the drawer handles. Which colour do you personally like the most? I agree that in the internal bathrooms should be ignored in the decision making on handles that you are now trying to do. If you are able to change the brass tap for you ensuite, I think it will look just as beautiful in the brushed nickel or chrome. At least this would keep some consistency in colours across both bathrooms. It may be an opportunity to tie in the ensuite tap fittings with something else in the house.

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Comments (21)

PRO
Dr Retro House Calls
4 years ago
I think your selections have already made your house look very eclectic. There isn't anything available that will tie it all together. Your thinking about consistency should have been from the start, rather than trying to make it consistant when you are looking at the finishing touches.

I think that the safest bet would be polished nickel as your kitchen is probably in an open plan area and is the most visible. The bathrooms will probably have their doors closed. With polished nickel most of the house will seem fairly consistant when the bathroom doors are closed, apart from the front door.

Best of luck (and be aware that most visitors will never notice),

Dr Retro

of Dr Retro House Calls/Dr Retro Virtual Visits
Maya A thanked Dr Retro House Calls
PRO
Michael Bell Architects Pty Ltd
4 years ago
Brass stripped of clear finish is a great solution generally. It goes brown and then you get a shiny bit where the handle is used. This is particularly good externally. You get a lovely lived in patina.
Maya A thanked Michael Bell Architects Pty Ltd
Kate
4 years ago
I use the same knob as in the kitchen but larger for the doors
Maya A thanked Kate
Maya A
Original Author
4 years ago
last modified: 4 years ago
Thank you for your suggestions everyone. @Audrey1967! I've attached a pic of the outside of the house. It's been painted but we will have to replace the roof when the extension goes on. The extension will be modern in Monument fibre cement cladding with a lot of glass (stacking sliders or bi-folds, fixed panels and louvres) and we'll flow similar colours through from the original house to tie it together. We have custom timber shelving/cabinetry in the ensuite and kitchen and will possibly put in the main bathroom too, which we will continue through to the extension in some form as well. We are replacing the old hollow plain doors with some antique cedar 4 panel colonial doors we found on Gumtree. All walls/ceilings/skirting/architraves will be replaced with new. We're putting colonial skirting/architraves through the original house and probably going with square set cornice and plain skirting in the extension. The brushed raw brass tapware has already been purchased and waiting for the main bathroom, so that's decision made.

@Michael Bell Architects Pty Ltd I think unlaquered brass will win in the end. We already have it on the front door and will be on the window hardware too. The kitchen and ensuite will just be their own little entities. Thank you for the "push" I needed. :)
Audrey1967!
4 years ago
Maya A did you say that the weatherboard in the above photo is full strength Surfmist with Monument trims What is the lighter colour? It looks great.
Audrey1967!
4 years ago
Is your new roof going to be tile or colorbond? If colourbond, are they doing extra tie downs. I would love to change my orange terracotta roof, but apparently for my house it isn't as simple as just replacing the roof. Because colorbond is lighter than tiles, they will need to do tie downs to the new roof to account for high wind conditions. PS. With that gable roof, you are definitely on the right track, changing the internals to a more colonial look and having a very different style in the back of house, linked by colours.
Maya A thanked Audrey1967!
Maya A
Original Author
4 years ago
@Audrey1967! thank you for your encouragement! This is my first full house reno, and we're doing it for ourselves and not to "flip", so it makes every decision much more personal as well as "permanent". I'm no designer, so it's quite overwhelming to be honest. We have 2 young kids and a home business, and living in our home whilst my husband tries to owner-build on weekends. The work is never-ending and the amount of decision-making involved is exhausting. But we're learning a lot, and at least in the end we will have a home we built for ourselves and not a cookie cutter.

Our plan calls for replacing the roof with colorbond. I actually like tile, but it will be considerably more expensive, and heavier of course. Our interior walls are a mix of masonite and horsehair gyprock, with no insulation, so as we tear off each wall (*sigh), we're insulating all exterior walls and adding the steel tie-downs every 1.5 metres in anticipation of the new lighter roof.

The house is full strength Surfmist with Monument trims. The front door is just black gloss. The windows, soffits and gable trim are Solver Simply White 1/4 strength, but you could probably use Vivid white also. Using Surfmist 1.5 strength would give more depth of colour to the exterior and more contrast with the white window trims etc.
siriuskey
4 years ago
What's happening with this "Best ANSWER", who picks the best answer it appears that once a post is marked BA it follows through on any other comments made by the picked houzzer, no offence intended to you audrey1967, it is happening to others commenting on different posts
Audrey1967!
4 years ago
What do you mean sirluskey...how does that happen? I wasn't aware that there was such a thing? Where is the best answer thing that you are talking about? Maya, good forward planning. I didn't even know about tie down requirement until I asked questions about replacing my tile roof. You roof is a nice colour that will match a lot...I just can't get over orange terracotta tiles like mine is. Re the new extension, I am probably the worst person to be giving design advice, but just IMO, I think it will be important to ensure that all rooms are consistently very modern if you are going for the modern look (clean lines, no cornices etc). Some of the accessory colours that you have used in the original part of the house, still can be found in modern fittings, so that is good. When I see the overall look that you are trying to achieve in the original house, I think that maybe the room that doesn't fit that look is the bathroom that has the modern timber vanity and is also wall hung. It looks more modern or retro to me. However, the shower screen though, looks to fit with the more colonial look of the doors and fittings used in other rooms. I am sure though, that with some clever yet minimal accessories in that bathroom though, it could be blended in with the other rooms in current house. Maybe that is a later question to ask, after the decided upon renos have been completed.
Audrey1967!
4 years ago
Just looked at your bathroom again...it is only the vanity that something different to traditional to me....but it could very well be just me...the subways were definitely a good choice
siriuskey
4 years ago
Audrey1967 it is shown in green on the lower left of some posts, weird, I will try to post a screen shot, we have asked Houzz for an explanation
siriuskey
4 years ago
PRO
Dr Retro House Calls
4 years ago
siriuskey - Audrey1967's "Best Answer" flag doesn't appear for Pro's, which is why I had never seen it before. Makes me wonder how it is worked out, or who decides.

Dr Retro
siriuskey
4 years ago
Dr Retro the first time I saw it today was on one of your comments which made me think that Houzz was throwing their support behind the Pros, strange isn't it, is it a hiccup in the system showing how they rate the leader board, gremlins
PRO
Dr Retro House Calls
4 years ago
siriuskey, I am no longer a paying Pro member so there is no reason that they would support me, and I am not notified that I had the "best" answer for anything here on the forum.

Dr Retro
siriuskey
4 years ago
Perhaps it's a scoring system that Houzz uses, this is from " Kitchen Renovation"
Audrey1967!
4 years ago
Gosh, people will be in trouble with their renos, if Houzz flags mine as the best answer....Yikes! lol
Audrey1967!
4 years ago
I had this saved in my ideabook (when I was just seeing how different my selected melamine colour was to what I had envisioned...doh!)..........the project reminded me of you.....https://www.houzz.com.au/hznb/projects/thornbury-extension-pj-vj~3146025
Maya A
Original Author
4 years ago
@Audrey1967! if your terracotta roof tiles are in good condition, you could have them painted. That will be much cheaper than replacing the roof - I think it's around $2000 (?) and the result is really good.
Audrey1967!
4 years ago
I did get a guy out to give me a quote on cleaning and painting the roof. He said he will have to quote it using scaffolding because of the steep roof. That was a couple of weeks ago, but haven't heard back from him yet. I have seen some bad paint jobs of terracotta tiles so am a bit nervous about getting it painted. I wouldn't mind if my tiles were just slightly darker like yours rather than orange, but I do know that the darker they are, the more they will hold heat and Brisbane is hot.

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