We Have a Back Door!

Now that we FINALLY closed on the house, we took care of a couple of important items.  The very first thing was a new toilet seat for one of the bathrooms – now our tushies can sit where no tushie has sat before 😮

The next item was to install a new back door.  A while back I asked for everyone’s opinion in a poll, to choose between a 9-Lite and a 15-Lite wood door.  It was a tie between the two (with one vote for the metal door with burglar bars – thanks, Dad!), so I guess we couldn’t have gone wrong with either choice.  And our choice was:

 

The JELD-WEN Solid Core 15-Lite Wood Door

 

 

We set out to pick up the items we needed at Home Depot early yesterday afternoon.  I had called prior to leaving to make sure that this particular Home Depot had the door we wanted in stock.  Yes, they did, I was told — when we got there, no, they did not…humph!  However, the sales clerk called another Home Depot further north in Palm Harbor – they had 3 in stock, so we hopped in the truck and drove up there.

They actually DID have 3 in stock, so we picked out one, plus all the little goodies hubs needed for the install – hinges, door handle, deadbolt, drill guide kit, chisel, and 8′ straight edge.  The Schlage door handle and deadbolt had a great feature called “blue key”… basically it lets you re-key a lock without having to call a locksmith.  We wanted the door handle and deadbolt key to be the same, so the clerk used the magic blue key to somehow reset the tumblers inside one lock, and then set it to use the key from the other…very cool!

We got back to the house around 3:30 and Jim got to work, with K. and I as his assistants.  The door did need some trimming, both in the width and the height.  After trimming, he hand-chiseled the slots for the hinges on one side of the door.

He screwed the hinges on the door and then attached it to the door frame.  A little tweaking on the fit, and then he was on to installing the door handle.  K. and I tried to decipher the instructions for using the drill kit – by then I was fatigued and cross-eyed, so K. did a much better job than I.  Jim got the drill guide attached, drilled the cross-bore for the lock body and the latch hole.  He did a quick install of the hardware, twiddled with the latch fit, and TA-DA!!  Our house now had a locking back door!

 

Isn’t it lovely?  It was very late, so we decided to save the deadbolt install for today – at least the house was secure!  Our goals for today are to finish the install of the door hardware, and then empty out a rented storage unit and bring all the items to the garage.  It will have been a very productive weekend – well worth all the scurrying it took to close on Friday 😮