A New Kitchen Door

Friends, I am so excited by our project over the long holiday weekend! 

Tim had four days off (including Saturday and Sunday), though he did a regular inspection on Saturday due to the clients' deadline.  So we enjoyed family on the 4th, had appointments (more on that tomorrow) and shopped for a kitchen door on Friday, installed said door on Saturday, and spent Sunday with dear friends.  It was a full weekend that also included dinner at my brother in law's home on Saturday.  

Today is all about the kitchen door!

We installed a new kitchen door 18 years ago when we moved into this house, and over the last few years, the jamb started to rot and the whole thing was a big eyesore.  

With Tim running his own business and being very busy, the door replacement got put on a back burner.  Then I realized that I could make things happen by doing research on doors, trying to find things that Tim wanted, and I had a conversation with our SIL's brother who runs their family carpentry business.

This got things rolling, and after a few phone calls by Tim to smaller local companies, we headed to Home Depot, where we had found our previous door many years before.  

We wanted to keep a lot of light coming in through this door, and the door we were replacing had 12 lights so we wanted at least that same amount.  HD didn't have those in stock, and if you wanted anything with a rot resistant jamb, it was going to get very expensive.  So over to Lowe's.  We found several doors that we liked, but only one with a rot resistant door jamb.  

The door we ended up with is a fiberglass 'full light' door.  {here}  Then we chose paint.  I thought we'd buy a gallon of exterior paint, but Tim decided to spray paint the door, so we chose a deep red and headed to the door hardware section.

We picked out a new set of door knobs and dead bolt.  We bought a set by Kwikset that we could program to use our existing keys.  Then we headed home.

Tim and Kyle set up the saw horses in the front yard under the trees (it was really hot and humid), and Tim managed to get the whole door painted before afternoon thunderstorms moved in!

Saturday afternoon the old door and jamb came out 

The new went in...

and voila! A new door!

The red is not reading correctly in this above photo, its much closer to the bottom photo, but a deeper, bluer undertoned red.  We've had thunderstorms every day this past weekend and its raining this morning, so the photo colors are all off.

I'm thrilled to have this new door!  When we come into the room we keep thinking the door is open! Ha!

ps - just for openness sake we did pay Daniel for his services.  He gave us a personal rate, however, and said if we tried to pay him more he wouldn't do the job.  So.  If you live in Central Pennsylvania I can highly recommend this third generation business Musser Carpentry.