Doorknobs

I've always known I would replace the doorknobs in our house. They are builder's grade brass - boring. They are probably one of the first things I notice as "off" in our rooms, yet they are the last thing I think about in the hardware store. I think my husband must be brainwashing me.

Luckily, two of the doorknobs in our house have broken. Yay! Doorknob shopping that requires no explanation. You must have doorknobs.

What I'm trying to decide now are what kind of doorknobs to get. While I think my house flows, we do not have the same metal finishes in each room. The room I'm sitting in right now, the dining room, has antique gold window treatment hardware. Our office has black drapery rods. The kitchen cabinets are in the process of getting stainless steel pulls (more on that later). Our bedroom has oil rubbed bronze hardware; the basement has brushed nickel, as does one son's room. My other son's room has black hardware and my daughter's room sports white curtain rods. Somehow, it all works; I suspect it's because the rooms are large enough that they don't really seem like one unit, even while being somewhat open to each other. Each room is very much its own personality, but the decorating style in each makes them all family.

My choices seem to be finding a finish that relates to all that and using it throughout, using a different but coordinating finish on each level, or even more deeply mixing and matching. For instance, I could do a doorknob in one finish on the public facing side of a bedroom door, and a second finish on the interior side.

I have no idea. And it's a big job, because I can't just change the doorknobs - I will have to change and/or paint the lock jamb thingie and the hinges.

Hmm. Maybe it's a good thing only two doorknobs have broken.

I have always liked glass doorknobs, since my late Aunt had them in her Tudor style home in New Jersey (someday I will have to do a post on Aunt Shirley, who was responsible for immersing both my mother and me in the love of interior design).

But glass doorknobs can scream Victorian:

As these do to me. There is nothing about my house that speaks Victorian. With the right decor, I think those could also do well in a beach house, but despite actually living in a beach house, our home has coastal touches but I"m not sure if it's beachy enough to carry that ornate glass knob.

Then I found these:

That, to me, is stunning doorknob. It does exactly what I always hope an item will do - meet Traditional Me and Modern Husband halfway in the middle. It's clean AND pretty. I love it - trouble is, I found it on a http://www.housetohome.co.uk. Darn UK. Shipping could be pricey and I don't even know the base price. I will have to investigate.

After I posted this, I realized what I'd love to do is have a plain glass doorknob against a doorplate that coordinated with whatever metal was going on in the room, perhaps aged. I think doorplates help a glass doorknob not disappear anyway, and the right plate shape could further pull the glass doorknob away from traditional and into a little more current, a bit coastal, somewhat...okay, somewhat beachy.

Definitely have some investigating to do.