Metal fabricators cater to two basic areas of home improvement: security and beauty. Of course, when you do custom ironwork, even the security-oriented stuff has to have a clear eye toward aesthetics as well. A window grill or tall yard fence can’t be ugly just because it’s functional — this is the land of appearances making reality, after all.

The Many Uses of Ironwork
Custom ironwork around the residence can include a staggering variety of products. The aforementioned window grills and fences, of course, but much more as well. Handrailings, iron gates, external doors, balustrades, patio furniture, even bedroom sets can be made largely out of wrought iron if you like the aesthetic.

By combining many of these elements, you can create a unified look to your home while improving your home security as well. Then there’s the garden. Gazebos, trellises, arbors, latticework, and the occasional worked iron statue decorate the back yards of the District of Columbia en masse.

A Technical Art
It’s not easy, crafting the perfect wrought iron gate. In Washington DC, there is enough demand that custom ironworkers are often called in from Maryland or Virginia because they have better technical skills than the locals. Only the best fabricators can combine the processes of cutting, bending, milling, buffing, stamping, finishing, and the many other techniques of custom ironwork to create an end product that looks amazing and will last for centuries.

Fortunately, such metalworkers know that they’re in demand, and they charge appropriately to make sure that their work doesn’t become too common. If they didn’t, wrought iron and similar custom ironwork wouldn’t be special anymore, and that would be a sad day.

For the residences, businesses, and institutions of Washington DC, top-tier custom ironwork represents an investment into safety and beauty that few can make, but everyone can appreciate – just as it should be.

Well, in terms of why people choose wrought iron gates in general, there are a couple obvious answers — and one extra that explains their popularity in our nation’s capital.

Durability
Wrought iron gates are extraordinarily tough. They resist all forms of weather, most forms of vandalism, and cannot burn. They’re strong enough to resist even a small bump from a motor vehicle. And they don’t even require a terrible amount of maintenance; once installed you just have to wash them once a year and keep an eye out for damage. Once it’s damaged, you do have to act fast to keep it from rusting or becoming brittle from the inside out — but that’s a rare event.

Beauty
Wrought iron has another clear advantage in that it’s not only innately beautiful to behold, but it can be shaped into almost any form. With just a little extra effort by one of the companies who do custom ironwork in MD or VA, you can get a wrought iron gate that looks good in front of any home, be it Victorian, Tudor, or Art Deco.

Price
A wrought iron gate is a good example of a Veblin good. A Veblin good is something that people buy in part because it’s hard to get — usually because of the price. Here’s where Washington DC stands apart from Seattle and Omaha and the like — folks in DC eat Veblin goods for lunch. They love to stand head and shoulders above the crowd. For that reason alone, wrought iron gates hold a special place in the hearts of the DC crowd.

Wrought iron gates aren’t only popular in DC, of course — homeowners across the length and breadth of New England love them, too — but long after they’ve vanished from the rest of the country, we believe there will still be a few last wrought iron gates holding out somewhere in the depths of the District of Columbia.

Much more commonplace are wrought iron rails and balustrades put in place by private homeowners looking to restore an authentic look and feel to their homes. (It’s actually a fairly common practice all over — installing wrought iron handrails in MD, that is.) A large part of the driving force behind the phenomenon is a recent interest in ‘polishing’ a home.

Polishing
Polishing is the practice of attending to the details of a piece of work, whether it’s a video game or a pre-Victorian restoration home. The difference between a polished home and an unpolished one is like the difference between a school play and Broadway. The essential content is the same, but the details convey the content in an entirely different and much more impacting fashion.

Handrails
In a purely functional sense, handrails are simply a safety measure — that thing you hold onto when you climb stairs. Large, bulky rails leave less space for people to traverse the stairs — not always a big deal, but it can be. Handrails also need to be secure and hold up the majority of a large person’s weight — up to a few hundred pounds in the most extreme examples. Because they combine a slender profile with lots of staying power, wrought iron handrails are practical as well as being excellent polishing points for a restored home.

Wrought iron appears on handrails on interior and exterior stairs, balconies, patios, garden paths, and almost anywhere people can walk and might not want to fall over. Gaithersburg’s city parks, backyards, restaurants, and at least one shopping center all make ample use of the beauty and endurance of wrought iron handrails. Why don’t you?

Techniques
Ironwork is almost entirely decorative in nature these days, because most structural and other industrial iron pieces are crafted by machine, not by hand. Modern wrought iron is created using a variety of machines, but generally involves hot iron being molded before it cools. Hand-wrought iron is made by what most people understand as “blacksmithing” techniques; it’s forged on an anvil with a variety of hammers. Cast iron, on the other hand, is liquified, poured into molds, and then allowed to cool.

‘True’ iron Vs. mild steel
Almost all ironwork these days is not actually iron, but rather a form of mild steel. In most cases, that’s a good thing, because mild steel is less expensive, easier to work with, and more durable than true iron. If you’re a purist and you insist on the original, expect to pay up because you’ll have to get it imported from England.

Common Projects
Around Maryland, the most common wrought iron projects are gates, fences, benches, and handrails. There are also quite a few pieces of custom ironwork in Silver Spring, mostly on the interior of private residences, including enormous mirror frames, bed frames, and entire patio sets.

Uncommon Projects
The amazing thing about custom ironwork — that most people don’t ever realize — is a fabricator’s ability to create iron objects of almost any size. Because custom ironwork can be fused together seamlessly, there’s no particular reason to stick to small things; anything that can be made in pieces and put together on-site can be created and transported easily.

The short answer, then, to the question of “what can they do?” is “Almost anything.” Talk to your ironworks about your ideas and find out just how easily they can become reality — you’ll be surprised.

Here’s one real-world example of how to use a wrought iron fence. In Potomac, one homeowner buried half of a fence panel in the box of a raised-bed garden, and used the other half as a lattice for his green beans, tomatoes, and peas. It’s not something that you could have done in the 17th century when wrought iron first came into popularity, but with today’s more durable iron (actually a form of carbon-mild steel) it’s not only possible, but it’s beautiful.

The same homeowner also has a wrought iron fence around his backyard (which is mostly garden) and uses a second wrought iron fence panel with muslin wrapped around it as a shade to prevent anything from growing in his garden boxes until he was ready.

When asked why he chose wrought iron for his home, he mentioned that there wasn’t any other way to get the combination of visibility, security, and beauty. When asked why he used wrought iron in his garden, he said it was left over from his fence — but that he had fallen in love with it.

The view from his back door is phenomenal. The wrought iron ‘trellis’ creates a stunning focal point in his garden, and is perfectly backdropped by the wrought iron of his fence. It’s low-maintenance, offers security and beauty, and doesn’t interrupt the light coming into his back yard.

It’s not often that you think of a fence as a ‘finishing touch’, but in this case, the yard alone simply wouldn’t have done it. It only works with that dramatic focal point and the sense of drama given by a large black chunk of wrought iron fence. MD has a lot of small pieces of aesthetic wonder sprinkled through it’s backyards; we’re just glad that one of our fences got to be a part of one of them.

Keeping wrought iron looking good
While in most cases it’s wisest to leave the repair of damaged wrought iron to professional fabricators who do custom ironwork, MD‘s more handy homeowners can give it a shot at doing it themselves. You’ll need a small variety of tools, including a drill and bits, a hacksaw, rivets, metal glue or metal cement, a scraping tool, and some basic wordworking implements.

The basic technique involves removing damaged areas, reworking the iron into roughly it’s original shape, and then repainting. If you would have to do any kind of welding, let the fabricators handle it — the last thing you want is for a weak weld to cause an accident when your handrail snaps. You might just end up taking a tumble down the stairs and getting a serious metal sliver along the way.

Believe it or not, the same thing happens to houses. Owning a Victorian or Tudor home is a labor of love, and without the appropriate finishing touches, your home feels like that movie. It’s a front, an incomplete picture.

Imagine you’re walking up to a beautiful Victorian in Glen Echo Heights, and you see brick pillars holding up a wrought iron fence. The garden is well-tended, the paint is bright and the windows are clearly original. Then you round the corner and find nothing whatsoever between the pillars on either side of the driveway.

It’s certainly no less beautiful — but it feels incomplete. And with a moment’s thought, you’ll recognize what’s missing: a wrought iron gate. In Bethesda, such gates are falling out of style, and it’s a pity, because they complete the scene. There’s a special kind of sense of worth that comes with having a wrought iron gate over your driveway.

Even if you don’t have a wrought iron fence, an iron gate can still be put to good use; they go well with brick, stone, and other fences as well. Because it’s just about impossible to build a gate out of those materials, it’s a common enough practice to see a wrought iron gate attached to them that it feels natural and looks excellent.

Why a wrought iron?
In MD, wrought iron gates are most often used over driveways, and occasionally as a ornate device in gardens and backyards. The relatively mild winters of Maryland make them ideal long-lasting yard furnishings. With a special paint to help them resist the cold and the wet in winter, they can last for centuries.

Just as importantly, wrought iron can be made to fit with almost any decor. Victorian iron gates tend to be Baroque in design, but more modern Art Deco wrought iron gates are easy to find as well. Whatever your home looks like, there could very well be a wrought iron gate that would be the perfect finishing touch.

That means that most of the homes in Maryland also have handrails, whether short for the two steps up to your back patio or long for the stairs that lead from your backyard down to the beach of Chesapeake Bay. The kinds of handrails you choose can say a lot about you.

Modern Handrails
Handrails in today’s houses come in a wide variety of forms. Aluminum, wood, steel, and even plastic handrails are available alongside the traditional wrought iron handrails. MD homes, however, tend toward the traditional — and there’s some pretty good reasons for it.

Wrought Iron Handrails
The earliest wrought iron handrails date back centuries, but they’re very different from modern ones. That’s because the definition of ‘wrought iron’ has changed these days; today wrought iron is actually a form of mild steel with low carbon content. It’s still worked by hand the way old-style wrought iron was; it’s just harder and more durable today.

Between the aesthetic value that traditional wrought iron has — it’s stunning — and the fact that it won’t crack or warp like wood or dent or bend like aluminum, wrought iron handrails are everywhere. Even major cities choose wrought iron for their structures. In particular, there are wrought iron benches, wrought iron gates, and wrought iron handrails in Bethesda Row, the town’s main shopping and dining corridor.

Balustrades
Wrought iron balustrades add even more mystique and aesthetic power to an already gorgeous handrail. More importantly, they also enforce the handrail and make it even safer for use. If you have the space — meaning your handrail isn’t already attached to a wall — a wrought iron balustrade is a perfect addition to a wrought iron handrail.