Rotted Out

When we last saw my door it had seen better days. I called Lowe's about installation and it started at $300 plus the cost of any extra materials. Given the price of the door, I was less than enthused to have to spend that kind of money unexpectedly. But since I didn't want to bother my dad with it, I decided to go ahead with it, I mean it had to be done right?

My mother decided to tell my dad that I had contacted Lowe's for installation and was LIVID. He felt like I was insulting him and calling in an invalid. This was not the case at all, it was more me being considerate of his time and his back pain. He threatened to "never come over again" which I know he would not follow through on however, I did cancel the installers.

So back to the door... The houses in our neighborhood were built in the mid- 1970's. They all have a side door that goes into the garage. From walking the neighborhood, it is evident that the original door installed by the builder as an aluminum door with a Jalousie window. Much like this picture from Thrifting Thursday.

Somewhere along the line, our aluminum door got switched out for a wooden door. Not sure if it was done by the "flippers" or before but everyone should know not to use a wooden door as an exterior door being exposed to the elements. So I went to Lowe's and Home Depot to check out my options. I knew I wanted something with a window so I was basically left with three options:
1) Basic Steel Door with built in glass window

2) Basic Steel Door with fully functioning window

3) Basic steel door with built in blinds.

I was originally going to go with the first option because of the price ( $188) but decided that I liked the ability to open the window for ventilation considering how many projects we do in the garage. I was nervous about the blind mechanism breaking in the third option so I went with option #2 which was $228.

Before we headed out for supplies, we removed the existing door frame to get the precise measurements. We knew it would be a tight fit but we thought we could make it work.We purchased a 32 x 80 Right hand door. We also had quite a bit of trim work to do so we also purchased some caulk, shims, colonial trim and some 1 X8X8's.

After we got the new framed door in, we realized we actually had too much room. We used two trimmed down 1X8X8's to frame in either side of the doorway.

 My dad also cut down a bunch of the wood and stacked it to frame in the top of the door. Here is a before and after comparison of what I am referring to.

After the the door was nice and secure, we added new trim. Since the garage still had the original clam shell moulding, we decided to go ahead and replace it with colonial moulding like the remainder of the house. The picture below is with just factory grade primer and raw wood still exposed.

Here is a close up of what the trim looked like pre-paint. You can see the original door jamb and the additional wood framing we added, all capped off with the colonial moulding.

Since we purchased pressure treated wood, we waited a while for everything to dry out completely before we added more primer and paint. Tim actually surprised me and tackled the door painting while I was at work one day.

 We used leftover primer and paint from our Picture Frame Moulding Project. We used one coat of primer and 2 thin coats of Benjamin Moore Advance paint on the inside. On the outside of the door we used the same white exterior paint that is on our house trim.

 I was a little bit concerned home the outside would look since the previous door jamb fit different.  As you can see in the two pictures below, it needs a little touch up painting around the caulk lines but its nothing I can't handle.

It has been SO nice to have a secure door here now! It has been raining several inches every day here in Florida for the past week and we can open the door with ease.. No swelling! I am also really glad I went with the ventilated window option because that has been a nice feature on laundry day as well.

HUGE thanks to my dad for helping on this one!!! :)