installing a porch door

Six months after opening the last door downstairs, we’ve opened the last nailed-shut door upstairs.

The house had been split into a duplex back in the day. One of the side effects of this was that a few doors were nailed shut and one of the doors to the upstairs porch was completely closed off and dry-walled over. We found the door space early on but nailed a door in place and moved on to more pressing issues.

With the early burst of spring this weekend, we decided to take a pass at that door just to see what it would take to have it be usable. The temporary door in place, while original to the house, was a few inches too short and too skinny to really fit. We’ve been holding onto a few other doors that came unattached with the house, but in looking, none of them fit and they are all a little warped anyway.

We took our measurements and went to the local megahomestore to see what they had to offer. The original doors, interior and exterior, are all of the same wooden construction. Wooden doors of the same dimension are now considered interior doors — who knew? Any way, we of course didn’t find any doors that were a natural fit to the doorway, but we did find a nice wooden door that was almost tall enough and a few inched too wide. Close inspection, though, showed attached instructions of a maximum amount that could be trimmed, a maximum amount that wasn’t enough for us.

We also found and ended up purchasing a pre-hung metal clad door. The width including the new frame was *almost* perfect and we jimmied the height by removing the awful plastic&aluminum threshold that were attached. There were a few rude carpentry moments in getting everything to fit, but the installation went incredibly smoothly considering how things usually go around here. There was no bickering and hardly even any cursing!

This doorway is at the end of the hall, at the top of the stairs, and offers a view of the length of the porch. It is a dramatic little space, a part of the house that we pass through on a very regular basis, and having the new open door in place is already awesome. We’re not quite finished yet, we still need to get the deadbolt and threshold in place, but the big hard part is done.