Hi, I'm interested in replacing the doors in my 3 bed terraced home (6 doors in total). The doors at the moment have a very badly fitted glass panel at the top to allow light in. Would it be possible to have this removed or replaced to look better? Thanks.
Anything is possible- the fanlight at the top of the door allows "borrowed light" (as it's known) into halls from adjoining bedrooms. Problem is you won't be able to buy prehung door sets with an equivalent fanlight over the door off the shelf. So you either buy your doors and frames separately and have a carpenter make up the frames to suit the existing rough opening or eliminate the fanlight altogether. This creates its own problems in terms of finishing the drywall (plasterboard) in a satisfactory manner. And do you really want to eliminate the fanlight anyway?
We replaced our doors and got rid of the fanlights a couple of months ago. Our walls are very thin upstairs so the carpenter had to make up the frames and source non-standard width doors.
He took out the fanlights and made up wooden frames (same size as the fanlights), installed these into the gap and screwed plasterboard on either side to make it flush with the surrounding walls. We then had to get a plasterer out to plaster over this. Worked a treat and looked great. Can be quite expensive as we had to get a plasterer out. We decided to ge tthe box room skimmed while the plasterer was there. Don;t think he would've come out just to plaster over old fan lights...
Ciaran - Hope you don't mind we getting in on you posting!
What you've been through sounds exactly what I'm about to go through would you mind sending on the details/costs/suppliers of doors/advice or lessons learned. As, we too have thin walls/fanlights upstairs.
I wonder are we living in the same type of house D16 B.......r?