Our house is old. I know that's not news, but what that means is that it comes with a lot of quirks. Some of them are totally benign and we work around them with hardly any thought of it. However, others are more bothersome and more difficult to ignore.
One such of these was the kitchen entry door. This is the door from our mud room (the original rear porch of the house) into the kitchen. Due to its original purpose, it is an exterior entry door.
Anyway, on the final walk through with the former owner, he gave us a box with a new entry knob in it. He said he'd had some trouble with the door sticking before so he got a new knob, but it seems to be fine now. He left it for us in case it started acting up again.
Well, it was fine for us so we ended up using the knob in one of the doors we installed on the 3rd floor in the attic. So, of course, the knob finally began acting up on us.
And by acting up, I mean not working. That's right. So, we could not get in or out that door (even with the key) for as long as it decided to be stuck. Very frustrating. Anyway, no big deal. I got a new entry handle (lever-style) and installed that. Problem solved.
No biggie.
Our rear storm door (into the mud room from outside) has been acting up for a little longer.
It started out by just not quite fitting right, so when the door closed you would have to slam it shut. Frustrating, noisy, but tolerable.
Then, the latch started to get stuck. When the latch sticks, the door locks shut. We started just leaving the storm door slightly ajar when he left so we could still get back in when we arrived home. But, a good breeze would whisk it shut and we'd have to go around the house and it the front door instead.
Like I said, we deal with a lot of these little quirks so we put up with it for quite some time.
But, in March, my MIL came to stay with the kids while Kevin and I went on our vacation with lia sophia. She is not used to living with all of these quirks, so the storm door (coupled with the leaky gutter directly above it) was enough to move her to tremendous generosity.
She offered to contribute toward a new storm door if we could go pick one out while she was still visiting. I think she wanted to make sure we would take care of it sooner, rather than later.
Our storm door entry is 30" wide. I know. That didn't mean anything to me 3 months ago either. Since then I've learned that 30" is no longer a standard size. Storm doors now come 32" or 36" standard size, and 30" is a "custom" size.
In home renovations, "custom" is remodeler-speak for "uber expensive". We tried Menards and Lowe's but one couldn't even order a 30" door for us and the other one could but even the super basic one was running over $400. Ouch!
So, we came back to Bluffton and I stopped by Vetter on a whim. Wouldn't you know it, they could order us a storm door at 30" standard, not custom, by the same manufacturer we were looking at with the other stores, and still with the hide-away screen. Get out of town! Needless to say, we ordered it.
When it finally arrived I was so excited and told Kevin not to worry about it. One morning when he left for work I told him he'd come home to a newly hung storm door. :)
It was going so great! I had the old door off lickety-split and the directions were so easy to follow. I was a DIYing superwoman!
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| The new door waiting to be hung. |
Then it came time in the steps to start hanging the pieces of the door. I drilled and screwed in the hinge side of the door and did likewise on the top drip edge. Then I shut the door to align the handle-side frame.
Except the door didn't shut. It was 10 am in the morning. Things had been going so well, but the door didn't shut. The opening wasn't flush and the door was hitting the top drip edge just 3 inches in from the wall. The rest of the 20+" length didn't go into the doorway.
Grr...
So, I consulted with our neighbors and I waited until my husband got home (no door hung) to share with him my woes and seek his opinion on the best solution to our problem.
But, now I'm getting tired so I'm going to wrap this up quickly. Several days later, and several cuts with the circular saw, and we finally hung the door. Whew!
And, honestly, I'm so grateful for the nudge from my MIL, because our new storm door is amazing! I love knowing that I will not be "locked" out of the house when I get home and I LOVE the sliding screen. :)
Don't you just love old houses??
P.S. I know it's been WAY too long since we updated the ol' blog, but stay tuned because this past weekend we started demoing the 1st floor bath. :) More to come on that later this week.
