Home Improvements

When we built our house, we intended to put a deck outside our bedroom, so we put in a door to the outside.  We long ago decided not to build the deck, but we still have the door.  Our house is now 21 years old, and it was a wood door in a wall that faces south, so the door is badly weathered.  We've been needing to replace it for a few years, and finally decided this was the year.  We researched what doors would qualify for the energy tax credit and purchased a  pre-hung door at Lowe's on Sunday.  We decided it would be easier to paint it before we installed it (ourselves), so we've been doing that this week.  Today was the day to install it.  DH got the old door out while I was removing the masking tape from the new door.  It was at this point that he realized we had forgotten one very important detail; when we built our house, we made the outside walls 6 inches instead of 4 inches in order to be more energy efficient.  But we bought a 4 inch door.  So it didn't fit.  We couldn't return it because we'd already painted it.  And the old door was out, so we had to do something today.  DH decided to remove the wood trim that would have been on the outside if we had bought the right size door.  I figured at this point he might as well; the door was worthless to us the way it was and we couldn't return it, so we had nothing to lose.  Amazingly enough, it worked; the door is in.  There is a gap on the outside we're going to have to fill, but the door actually opens and closes.  These kinds of projects ALWAYS take longer than we think they will, but especially when we make a major mistake like this one.  I hope to be able to get back to more fun projects soon; like sewing and/or painting (as in watercolor, not doors!).  But I'm happy to have the door almost finished.  We had so many air leaks around the old door that DH had taped it up a couple of years ago (we rarely used it anyway).  But since we are picking up our puppy in a couple of weeks, we wanted to be able to use the door again; puppies need to go outside often, even through the night.  It will be a lot more convenient to be able to use the bedroom door.

To be continued . . .