Big Blue Door

We got the front door put on! It took 12 hours and more people than originally intended, but it happened and it looks great. Here are some pictures of the process.

 This is a "before" shot. This is how our door has looked since we moved in. The paint is kind of an icky color and it's just beat up, to boot. The handleset is cheaply made and really didn't weather well. The door also doesn't fit very well, so you kind of have to slam it to get it to close properly.

We started out by pulling the old hinges off the frame and then taking off the inside trim. So far, so good.

 We ended up cutting the frame in a few places and taking it out in pieces just to make it easier. We really didn't have to do this part, but it did go a bit faster. We were thinking there would be a bunch of finishing nails hold the frame to the studs and we didn't want to have to find them all, but there were actually only a few screws and we pulled them out pretty easily.

This is the adjustable threshold. This screw used to be a phillips head screw, I'm sure of it. We couldn't get these out of here (it turned out we didn't even need to, so what follows is especially painful), so I got one of those stripped screw extraction kits.

That's the one. I used the biggest one, since the screw had a pretty giant stripped-out hole in the top.

You use this end to "burnish" the stripped area, basically making it smooth enough for the threaded end to grip on.

If you're really unlucky, you spend $17 on a screw extraction kit and it breaks the first time you try it. Lame. Made even worse by the fact that we absolutely did not even have to mess with these screws. They stayed exactly as they were the whole time.

So what's 1/3 of $17? Too much to spend on a piece of crap like this, I say.

Anyway, back to removal. We used out handy little power tool again on this project and it was great.

Just pulling this stuff out, exposing the studs.

There we are. There's a 2x4 in the top of the frame up top there that will become important later. Also, you can see the damaged piece of trim on the right. The paint had stuck to the surface of the trim so thoroughly that it was tearing the thing apart when we removed the door frame. We'll have to replace that before we're done.

Okay, next step here. The whole frame is out and ready to start trying to shove the new frame in here. This hole in the house doesn't seem quite so bad as the one in back, either because it's smaller or because I'm just used to it now.

This is why we should talk to people who know about this stuff before we get too crazy. Remember that 2x4 in the top of the hole there? Turns out the new frame won't fit in with that there. We're pretty well convinced that it's an important piece and don't want to risk the house collapsing on us if we pull it out. In order to fit the door in, we try to thin out the 2x4. We used a saw, a hammer and chisel, our Sonicrafter, and finally, this bad boy. This is part of why I like working on projects at my house. When I need to do something, I have tools from pretty much every period in history that we can try. This is called a draw knife and you really don't see them much anymore. They're very handy for fast shaping of wood, though. This angle makes everything kind of a pain to use and we don't get far before I decide to contact my cousin Eddie. He's a general contractor and could have installed this door in less time than it took me to figure out which end of the hammer to hold. He let us know that the 2x4 is just a filler and that we could take it out without causing any catastrophes.

Yeah, he was totally right. Up above here, you can see three 2x4s or 2x6s on end bridging over top of the 2x6 framing pieces. Keep the 2x6 framing pieces in mind; they'll come up shortly.

What's this? Yeah, that's what happens when your door frame is built for a 2x4 framed wall and your wall is framed in 2x6. We thought to measure absolutely every aspect of this door except the depth, somehow. Lesson learned. Thankfully, we appear not to be the first people to do this, and Lowe's and Home Depot both sell jamb extension kits to solve this very problem.

To attach the jamb extension kit, you take the brick mold off the jamb, then add the jamb extension, then add back the brick mold. It actually wasn't all that hard, but it really scared us. We weren't at all sure whether we'd be able to make it work, or if we'd have to order a whole new door or something. Thankfully, it wasn't that bad and the finished product looks pretty decent.

There's one jamb extension in place. You can see the seam, but it really isn't bad. It just looks like a seam in the frame, not like a giant blinking sign that says "The owner of this house is a moron and shouldn't be allowed to own power tools" or anything.

My friend Erick and his wife came over to help. Rather, they didn't come over to help, they came over because my wife and I said we'd go to dinner with them and the project took too long. They showed up to see what was taking so long, and good people that they are, decided to help us out. being crazy hungry may also have been a factor. Erick installed the new handset on the door for us. It's so much nicer than the old one in every way. The finish is better, the function is better, everything is just smooth and easy.

Here's the door with the brick mold on it. You can see it's getting dark. In July. Yeah, this took us a long time.

Replaced the trim piece, which was surprisingly easy. Just a straight cut at the end to get a snug fit and away we go. I really wish all of our fixes were so simple.

And the final product! I have to paint the trim piece, obviously, and probably touch up the paint on the door, but it's functionally perfect.

 Bit of a time-lapse series for anyone who cares (probably just me).

So there it is! One more "big" project in the books, with relatively little fuss. We still haven't gotten the cabinets in yet, unfortunately. Turns out one of them was pretty heavily damaged in transport, so I need to see if I can give it back and get a replacement. That'll be one of the next biggies, though. Other than that, we have a plumber coming this week to take a look at the master bath to tell us what we can expect, cost-wise. That should be exciting and get us on track to take on the next few big projects facing us. Woot! Thanks for reading, and thanks to Erick, Ed and my Dad for helping with the door.