Where It All Began
My husband and I are in the process of building a new home in the city after having lived in a farmhouse in the country for quite a few years. The style of our new home leans towards French Provincial, and I’ve been focusing on some key elements that will help bring that style to life. Recently, I’ve been focusing on the front door. This is such an important piece, as it gives the first impression to your home. One certainty with the front door hardware was that I knew I wanted to use brass. It’s such a classic and timeless finish, and I’ve seen it in a lot of French homes.
The Brass & The Knob
Since we’ve worked with Spokane Hardware Supply, Inc./hardwarehut.com on our last two homes and had such a great experience, we decided to work with them again this time around. I started by visiting the showroom and meeting with Dave to talk about the style I was looking for. I immediately honed in on French Antique brass and began looking at the hardware available in that finish.
Because I had chosen a rather simple door style, I wanted to elevate it a bit with the entry doorknob. After looking through a lot of options, I narrowed it down to these three choices (in the French Antique brass finish), which are all really great:
In the end, I selected the larger of the three choices, shown in the last image above. I went with the handle with the large plate, and I’m confident that it will add just the perfect finishing touch to the door.
The Inside
Next up was the interior door knobs. Rather than going with simple knobs and rosettes, I decided to add a larger rosette to each one. (The Rosette is basically a decorative plate that sits between the doorknob and the door and adds an extra special finishing touch). To keep the French Antique finish going throughout the house, I narrowed my choices down to these knobs and rosettes:
The knobs were the easiest decision because I wanted to keep it simple. It’s easy to get carried away with a brass finish, and too much detail starts to feel a bit too busy for my taste. So, I decided to go with the completely smooth finish, as seen in the second image above.
Because I really liked both of the rosettes equally, I decided to look at them through the lens of my camera to see them from a different perspective. It’s sort of like looking at a picture in a magazine and loving what you see. (Definitely try it sometime. Look at a design choice in person and then look at it in a picture, and you’ll probably be able to easily identify which choice is best for you). Based on that process, the simple Rectangular Rosette proved perfect for me.
You may have noticed that the Scalloped Rosette was one of my final two choices. This product would have matched my front door hardware. However, it wasn’t important for me to match the interior door rosettes to the front door, so I went with the rectangular design instead. Sometimes not having things perfectly match can add more interest and warmth to a project, rather than just same, same, same.
More Building, More Decisions
For more on my home construction, you can visit my blog. Stay tuned here for more posts as we continue building our new home.
Header Image Photo Credit: Lisa Diederich @lisadieder / Emtek.com
