Real Estate
Repairing or replacing brownstone doors
BY LIZ SADLER CRYAN
With their intricate woodwork
or simple curved
moldings, brownstone front
doors have graced many an Instagram
post, magazine ad and movie set. They
are the focal point of a brownstone or
row house facade. But many have been
damaged by years of sun exposure or
neglect, or replaced altogether with a
cheaper alternative.
Consider these expert tips on how
to give your brownstone front doors a
facelift:
“If it’s something minor, I tell people
it’s gonna be a repair,” said Vaughan
Scully, of Heights Woodworking. “If
it’s warped, then you have a problem.
We go over there and take a look at
what we have. When it comes to doors,
if you have a very unique or high-quality
door, or a door with some unusual
features or a lot of decorative elements,
or maybe very large, or in an unusual
size, or something that’s historic, that’s
the kind of place where it makes sense
to restore it. You’re never gonna make
it exactly the same way.”
For a door with 12 square pieces of
beveled glass and a curve at the top,
Scully applied a new veneer, panels and
moldings around the glass. He added
wood to the bottom so it would reach
the saddle.
“That customer saved probably
$7,000 by fi xing his old door up compared
to getting a new one,” Scully said.
“A new door would have been $16,000
to $17,000.”
But sometimes a new door makes
sense.
“There’s other cases where it’s not
really worth it if you have a door that’s
lesser quality –- maybe it’s pine, maybe
it’s painted,” Scully noted. “Restoring it
is gonna cost about $5,000 and new it’s
gonna cost $7,000. You’re putting quite
a bit of money in something that’s not
gonna be new when you get it back.”
Building a brownstone door from
scratch costs about $10,000 and takes
four to six weeks, as long as it can it
be hung on the existing doorjamb, said
Nate Shellkopf, of southside.workshop.
“Once you take the jamb out, it’s a
can of worms opened up all over the
fl oor,” he said. “I try and save it any
time I can. For a door, jamb installation
and casings, a reproduction can cost
Repairing or replacing a historic brownstone’s front doors can become a costly prospect if certain measures
are not taken.
$15,000 to $20,000.”
Shellkopf refers to tax photos and
neighboring brownstones when the
original door is missing. Working in
his Sunset Park, Brooklyn, studio, he
uses stave core construction to build
his doors from scratch, using pieces
of eastern pine glued together to create
the core, and mahogany or other
high-quality wood veneers on the outside.
Steel knives can cut intricate trim
work.
“When the top of the door is round,
it requires radius work — that ups it a
notch,” he said. “To run a molding at
a radius takes some skill to do. When
you’re doing a brownstone door with
radius work, there’s only a few of us
who do it.”
Vincent Battiloro, of The Finest
Brownstone Wood Restoration, started
making doors at age 14 in Naples, Italy.
He’s now 77.
“A lot of times, over the years, the
doors have been painted over or varnished
over. So a lot of people call me
to bring back the original color of the
wood, and I sand, repair or replicate
missing parts,” Battiloro said. “In the
event that the front doors are not repairable,
we will duplicate the original
design. Sometimes, they just have
a door from Home Depot, so what we
ask the customer to do is look on their
block for original doors. Nine times out
of 10 we just look at the door next door
and we just replicate it.”
Salvaged doors are another option
when the original door is missing -– but
they can turn out to be more work and
PHOTO BY SUSAN DE VRIES
money than homeowners anticipate.
“If you don’t get something that’s
very close to the opening that you have,
you’re in for a lot of work,” Scully said.
“If you buy a door that doesn’t fi t the
opening that you have and you’re not
gonna change the opening — which
means taking out the frame, cutting
into the wall and building a new frame
— you will probably have to cut or
modify the door by adding or removing
from the side, top or bottom.
“You should line up a person to install
fi rst and go with them to pick it
out,” he said. “They’ll know if it’s gonna
work or not.”
This article was fi rst published in
Brownstoner, a sister Schneps Media
publication of The Villager.
26 August 1, 2019 TVG Schneps Media