Friday, February 17, 2012

I a-door you

Oh god, that was awful. I'm sorry.

But in all seriousness, I do adore our new door. It was installed yesterday and it has already made such a huge difference. Take a peek:

Here was the problem: Our wee little house is old. Built in the 1920s. Our living room has a fair number of windows but no overhead lights. During the winter, it's pretty darn dark. The corner where the front door is was especially dim and guests coming into the house were met by hosts that they couldn't really see. I'm exaggerating a bit here but you get the point. 

Here is how it looked originally (but picture it at night with no lights in the vicinity). That's the coat closet on the left and the front door on the right:


Also, the door opened to the right (as most doors do), which meant that folks coming through the door then had to walk around the open door to get into the living room. People tended to get bunched up in the corner, up against the coat closet. Not ideal. 

Here is the original door from the outside:

The one massively cool thing about the old door was it had this little peek-a-boo hole for when you wanted to see who was outside without opening up the entire door:

Mostly we used it to scare the bejezus out of our guests. We're nice like that. 


Ok, so we've established that it was time for a new door. 

And here it is:


And a nifty in-progress photo:



Randomly, when the stoop was removed, we could see straight down into the basement. Freaky. 

Here is the lovely outside. We decided to stain it with a clear stain as we really liked the natural color. But picture the trim around the outside to be dark. Obviously that part isn't done yet. And probably won't be until we get around to painting the house, in the summer. 


 But the best part about the new door is that it lets in additional light. Light = a very, very good thing. AND, it now opens directly into the living room!! No more awkward trundle-around-the-door maneuvers. 
 I am so thrilled with the new developments that I spent 20 minutes of Ben's precious nap time (aka my free time) staring that the beauty. It is that cool. 

Bailey, on the other hand, was not amused that the central heat was turned off during the door installation. He tried to make friends with the space heater:
Oh you pansy SoCal pooch. Good thing we love you so much.