I posted about our new front door last week and showed off the exterior which we painted first. This past weekend we were able to paint the interior.

Door Before:

Door After:

And, just for fun, here is the exterior again

The paint we used inside was Sherwin Williams Proclassic in Alabaster which is the same paint we have used on all of the trim and doors in our house. It’s great paint and I love the color. It has a slightly creamy, rich look to it.

The decorative glass creates gorgeous rainbows throughout our entry when the sun hits it in the afternoons.

Throughout the whole door purchasing, installation, and painting process, there were a few things that didn’t go quite as expected. With so many home improvement shows (I’m looking at you, HGTV) making every DIY project look like a piece of cake, I’m here to tell you – they aren’t, at least not in the IC household.

The Purchasing Process

We thought we could just waltz into Lowe’s one day and purchase a door. Heh. Wrong. (We were also purchasing a french door for our patio which I wrote about here.) The first step was to get all of the proper measurements. We chose to have a pro do this and found out that our previous door had non-standard measurements. One store went so far as to say that we had the smallest door jamb they had ever come across (oh the shame) but also an unusually wide opening, and we’d have to buy a special custom door and then mull it on site since standard doors don’t come that wide and with jambs that small. I don’t fully know what half of this means, but it wasn’t as good as having the door come all in one piece.

We went back and forth to the big box stores countless times, and sometimes got differing opinions on what we could do. Finally, we got someone who just said, “well, why don’t you just get a narrower standard sized door and then use wider trim to hide the opening on either side. Oh and you can get a door with standard, larger jamb. It won’t make a difference”. Duh. Actually, I had wondered about hiding the extra space on either side of the sidelights with trim, but I never said it out loud, and I also wondered why we had to get the exact same size jamb as our old door. I (wrongly) assumed all these door experts would have suggested that had it been a viable option. Silly me. So, lesson learned, ask the obvious before you let store sales people talk you into a crazy complicated solution.

Odd Peep Hole

I’m still trying to figure out what Jeld-Wen did when they drilled the peep hole. The outside of the hole was bigger than the inside which resulted in no standard peep hole inserts fitting this hole. Since the door is already installed, it’s not like we can just return it, so rather than make a big fuss about it, we’ll just fix it ourselves (and perhaps send off a note to Jeld-Wen customer service, just so they know there was a problem).

We plan to make the hole larger so it fits a 9/16 inch viewer, but we first need to get the right size drill bit. Right now we just have an empty hole that we are currently covering with painters tape to keep the bugs and curious eyes out. BTW – Dad, if you’re reading this, I may be over to borrow a 9/16 inch inch drill bit soon :)

(I’m a) Ding Dong

When you have a 25 year old doorbell, don’t pull on it as you unscrew it. If you do, you might snap one of the connecting wires like I did.

Ah, the joys of DIY.

In any case, we are so happy with how it turned out, and the rest of the project went as planned. It is always fun to complete another project around the house.