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Front Door Makeover
This week, we’ve been working on a project that is long overdue – a new front door! We completely redid our porch (post coming soon) with the help of my father last spring break.
During that process, we found out our exterior brick is like a 10 on the Mohs hardness scale. It was absolutely insane! Since we had a hard time with that, I knew replacing the front door would be a big project.
We’ve also been waiting on a good deal (you know us). Last weekend, we prioritized our projects after rewiring the basement and we put the door first.
I knew I wanted a Craftsman style leaded lite steel door and guess what?! Lowe’s had one on sale. The right-handed one ended up being scratched and dented (yay, discount!) which was on the inside, so I wasn’t bothered.
If you like our Therma-Tru Benchmark door, check it out here.
Supplies and Directions Resources:
- Home Depot’s How to Install an Exterior Door
- Lowe’s How to Install a Prehung Exterior Door
- family handyman’s How to Replace an Exterior Door
One of the videos says something like “It’s not always that easy” and I knew ours wouldn’t be. The instructions even said you’ll run into problems so you need to have additional knowledge. So make sure you have some problem solving skills before DIYing this project (but isn’t that was a DIYer does? ).
Before
I believe this door is the original to our 1952 house! I really liked the style but it was incredibly energy inefficient. And, since there used to be carpet in the room, there was this one and a half-inch gap with no door bottom weather stripping. The air just poured in.
Measuring
Take off any trim and measure everything. We double and triple checked our measurements and still ran into a problem later on.
Demolition
This was fun! But the giant hole made me nervous!
We were very happy we could see how our exterior was set up. And, even better, the builder placed wood blocks into the block. Yay! We secured them even more with concrete screws.
Installation
We dry fit the door and it didn’t fit! Turns out, the brickmold on the front is not counted in the rough opening size (now it makes sense why but oh was I mad).
Lucas thought of the option to saw off ½ inch of the top brickmold and then it fit. We were putting additional trim up so that was a-ok.
We then added ¾ inch boards as a frame and following directions from the reference videos and detailed instructions. Make sure to use a gaps and cracks spray foam.
Finishing
We worked on finishing touches the next day (shopping an installation took a day itself!). We put the interior trim back up. Our new door was taller than the old so we did have gaps at the top that I filled with putty.
Caulk everything! I mean everything! Acrylic anything you want to paint and silicone everything you do not plan on painting.
I used some leftover “quarter-round” (ours is actually like quarter-oval) to make the interior threshold transition prettier.
Tape off and paint. Make sure you use exterior paint on the outside. I used Rustoleum Oil-Based Protective Enamel.
I wanted to tie in our black and stain look from the porch in with the door so painted then added black trim. This also covered the old caulk. We added TONS of silicone to this.
Punch out the hinge pins and take the door off to paint. Again, tape off and paint.
I used to love Zinsser’s 1-2-3 but then I found Valspar’s Primer and fell in love. Do at least one coat of primer and two coats of paint.
I did white on the interior and Sherwin Williams’ Salty Dog on the exterior. This brought our Mid-Century Paint Colors to the exterior.
After
We completely changed the look of our entry way with the front door makeover. It’s incredible to see how a “small” change can have such a large curb appeal impact. We really enjoyed this project and I am in love! Plus, it cost us less than $400 which we will probably save in energy bills!
So what do you think!!?
