"New" Front Door

Almost two years ago, I bought a new front door for our house. Yesterday I decided to stay home from work and install it. (I figured it's about time to get around to it, and the fact that I started 3 weeks ago by pulling half the siding off helped...)



The old door wasn't in great shape. It was pretty weather worn, and the weather strip at the bottom would not stay on it anymore. To the left of the door, you can see that the old shingles and old door frame is still on the house.

It turned out that when they put our existing door on the house, they decided to not replace the frame, and just stubbed the door into the existing frame. It looks like the door was a bit shorter than the existing frame, because they put a strip of wood on the bottom of the door to close the gap, and the weather strip was hiding the little strip of wood.

Whoever built this house with either cross eyed or didn't own a level. There is not a lot that is level, including the rough framing after I got the old door frame out. I had to do some shimming and build the thing out a bit so that the siding would go back on properly. (I didn't really want to take it all down and remove the old shingles, just because I was putting in a now door.


There was one episode of "John gets very angry at the stupid door", I got the thing all ready to go, and the top and bottom sills level, put the door in, and it wouldn't shut. Turns out the sides of the door frame were no where near level. I took the door back out, dropped the bottom sill a little, and Chad came over to help me finish putting the door in. (We also have a picture here from yesterday that proves that Emma did not change her clothes today...)


This afternoon I finished putting the siding back on the house. All that's left is finishing the sill at the bottom on the outside, and cleaning up the rough opening on the inside, and working on the little gap the new door left in the floor on the inside. As usual, one finished projects caused two others...