Replacing the doors

One of the major projects this fall has been replacing two of the doors. Our home inspectors recommended a fire door between the kitchen and the garage, since (apparently) most fires start in the garage. A fire door has a solid core of wood and will prevent fire from passing through to the interior of the house for much longer than a hollow-core door. We also felt the old front door presented a security weakness, because it had panes of glass very close to the handle and deadbolt. Maybe we've seen too many B-movies or 1970s crime dramas, but we both had visions of someone smashing the glass and then reaching through to open the door from the inside. And so we decided to buy new doors and put them in ourselves. Originally we measured the sizes of the doors, placement of the hinges, etc., planning to buy just the doors and use the existing frame and hinges. However, the folks at Home Depot convinced us that pre-hung doors were the way to go; apparently there are far fewer alignment problems. Well, not long after we brought the doors home, Mark quickly realized that even though his handyman skills were improving by leaps and bounds, he was still in over is head when it came to removing and replacing doors. Fortunately, our friend Mike is a consummate handyman and he graciously lent his help (and many of his tools!) to get the job done. Thanks Mike!

We rented a truck from Home Depot to get the doors home. (Only $19/hr, as you can see!)


The new door was slightly taller than the old one, so our solution was to remove the tile under the threshold. Here's Mike hacking away.


And here's the frame after the tile has all been cleared - you can see the bare subfloor and lots of broken tile chips, but the seam is pretty clean.


And there it is! We have yet to fill in the gaps with insulation and replace the trim, but the handle and locks are in, and it works great.


Having conquered the garage door, a few weeks later we set to work on the front door. Here we are well on the way with the door already installed. Mike is chiseling out the hole for the deadbolt, and Mark is installing the handle and lockset.


And there it is! Here you can see the yellow foam insulation, which hasn't been trimmed off yet. Once again, the job isn't finished until the trim is replaced, but as with the garage door, it's fully functional and works great.


Here's the view of the entranceway from the outside. Our old door had a mailslot; we decided to go with a mailbox as a replacement for additional security; you can see it to the left of the door.

Created: 11/30/03
Last updated: 11/30/03
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