Thanks for your reply. I had planned on replacing them all but wanted to check opinions first. I had also seen people adding beading to them to make them panelled as our kitchen door was just hollow like these existing ones with beading on top! It is the fitting cost that adds to it and then the hours spent painting

Hi Susi, Unfortunately, you need to keep the door. It is the case of having the hall and staircase secure from fire from any of the adjoining rooms. The door should be an F20 door. In the most cases, you can find the badge on the small strips towards the hinges. You can change the opening position if you'd like. I'd recommend you to change the hinge position an to the other side and open the door into the hall. So you can leave it open and it is not going to be in you way. I hope that helps. If you have more questions, please let me know. Best Eva

I am not an expert but I believe you do not need a fire door on the kitchen if the house is two storeys, only if 3 or 4 storeys. So beware if there is a chance of a loft conversion at some point. Otherwise you are ok. I believe fire doors do not need self closers any more. I’m not sure if you could have a cat flap in a fire door, I can’t see how it would still be fireproof with a hole in it. But hopefully these things are not an issue for you anyway given 2 storeys. I think you would want some sort of door there to stop kitchen noise and smells from pervading the rest of the house, but it’s personal choice. Our kitchen door lives open most of the time but we do shut it eg if cooking fish or curry or if we have people over and kids are sleeping upstairs, or if one of us has got up earlier and starts banging pans and plates and the other is still sleeping...

I’m not sure about white washing the table - I think that would bring another colour of wood into a room that already has several tones of wood; the floor, skirting, architrave, doors, fireplace and cabinets are all slightly different colours and I think if you painted some of these, the whole room would be more unified and the table would blend in. If it was me, I’d paint out the architrave, skirting, fire surround and kitchen cupboard doors to neutralise some of the orange tones. My own house has Victorian parana pine woodwork that a neighbour said the previous owner spent months stripping back. Unfortunately it was very orange (similar to yours). I felt guilty even contemplating painting it, however after 13 years of living with it, I finally painted some of it. (I couldn’t bring myself to do some of the more intricate bits, so still have some 😂). It is now much easier to live with and much easier to choose colours when decorating.