The route to the door is part of the decision
An armoured door set is heavy and bulky. In the old village there is no lorry at the entrance and no lift: you unload at the quay and climb through the lanes. Some vaulted passages, the rue Obscure first among them, impose a height and a width that no crate may exceed. Those dimensions are taken before ordering, not on the morning of the fitting.
Doors in old Villefranche are frequently outside standard sizes, and made-to-measure becomes the rule rather than the exception. In exchange, the frame is bedded into stone masonry that gives excellent anchorage — provided the fitting goes to someone who knows that material and chooses fixings suited to an uneven wall.
On the corniches and in the Vallon de la Roche the constraint reverses. Vehicle access exists and sizes are more ordinary, but the hairpin private drive and the gate govern delivery. A long van does not always make the final bend, and that is worth saying at the survey, while there is still time to adapt the solution.
Retrofit, full set, and what the façade commits you to
Retrofit armouring keeps your door: folded steel plate over the leaf, angle sections on the frame, a multipoint lock, anti-lift pins. It assumes a sound frame. Fitted onto a jamb pitted with damp of the kind found behind the Darse, it simply passes the load to fixings that will not hold on the day they are needed.
A full door set is designed and tested as a single unit, frame included, so its resistance no longer depends on the original support. A2P BP certification covers that assembly: fitting a different lock to it, however well regarded, loses the certification, because the configuration tested is no longer the one in place. On a landing off the montée du Calvaire that question belongs to the choice of model, not to the day after fitting.
Then there is the external appearance. In old Villefranche many doors open straight onto the lane, below the citadelle Saint-Elme, and you are frequently within the setting of a listed monument. Changing what is visible from public space can require planning consent and the opinion of the Architecte des Bâtiments de France. The planning department answers before anything is made.
How does this service work?
Techniques, typical situations, standards and things to watch out for: it is all on our door reinforcement page. This page focuses on what the service involves in Villefranche-sur-Mer.