Our First House Renovation: We have a door!

Our old door really helped keep our condemned house vibe.

For over a month our only way in to the house was with a drill and a square bit. This was good at keeping out unwanted guests, but also made it annoying to run to Menards or Home Depot for something we forgot (which never happened, haha).

We wanted to stick with the style of the original door, but were unsure what material we would want to order it in due to our budget. I was shocked at the price of fiberglass doors! One quote was over $1,500! So we ended up getting a steel door from Home Depot.

Our new threshold.

When we finally decided on the door we had to special order it because of the nonstandard size of the door and the abnormally deep door jamb, but Home Depot was running a sale on on all special orders so we got 15% off. Woo-hoo! The two week wait took FOREVER, but finally our door came.

Kevin and I installed the door as soon as we got it. Before our front door we had never installed a door before. I didn't realize how technical it could be. With our first attempt (yes, there were two attempts), we took the door off its hinges and squared the door frame to the opening. You probably already guessed that that didn't really work. We got everything squared and then we attached the door. Next we tried to close the door, but it did not shut. I tried to take a picture of the large gap between the top left of the door and the door frame but Kevin wouldn't let me.

We're plumb!

After our first attempt did not work, we took a step back and tried to figure out what went wrong. During our "brainstorming" session Dave came over. He brought us a couple of things: a carpentry book (I'm not sure why), a plumb bob, nice cedar shims and some great advice on trying to get our door square. After we took his advice we got the door to actually close in no time.

A closed door. Now we need to add the brick molding.

Our next step was to reattach the brick molding around the door. the two pieces on either side of the door fit perfectly but the top piece of brick molding did not. That led us back to Home Depot and Kevin getting to use his new power tool - a double bevel miter saw. As you can see in the picture it was getting to be dark real quick like. Nothing like using extremely sharp power tools at night.

Using power tools with sharp blades at night. Nothing wrong with that, right?

Reapplying the brick molding, caulking around the door, adding door hardware and applying insulation took no time at all. All we have left now is to paint the door (and decide on colors for the house)! It is the small things like being able to walk inside the house with out the loud drill that start making this house seem like our new (old?) home.