New Back Door

As part of repainting the house exterior, the door and frame would get repainted. 

However, it's a fairly old (original house?) steel door, with dents, scratches, and nicks all over.

Furthermore, there's a fair amount of rot on both sides of the jamb, extending to the interior part of the frame. When we moved in, I removed the worst of it, used some wood hardener and wood putty, and promised to one day replace the door. That day has come.

A small menagerie of squashed bugs even built up near the hinges!

To remove the door and frame, it was easiest just to remove the pins from the hinges, move the door, and deal with the frame separately.

I then carefully pried the casing from the interior side of the frame, and set those pieces aside. If you're careful, these pieces can be re-used. Unfortunately, I had to cut new casing because the new laminate flooring was lower than the old flooring, leaving a several millimeter gap between floor and door casing.

The door frame was held in-place by several long casing nails. I loosened each nail with my crowbar, then removed them with locking pliers. I had my reciprocating saw handy in case it turned out to be easier to just cut through a nail.

The original installers drove some extra nails through the exterior door casing, into the stud that frames the door (the jack stud).

Once I got the frame out, I got the pleasant surprise of more wood rot! The subfloor and part of the footer had corroded. I dug out any easy-to-remove rot, then used my circular saw to cleanly remove the subfloor plywood.

I also had to remove a soaked piece of siding (old masonite), then replaced it with a primed/painted Hardiplank.

After removing the subfloor, the beams are exposed, so I placed down a new piece of plywood to serve as the subfloor for this section.

The new door waited ever-so-patiently for installation.

The rough opening was tight, but not too tight, so I went ahead with installing.

The included instructions specified certain locations to place shims to keep the door in-place before screwing the door frame to the jack studs.

After the door was minimally anchored, I added additional shims at the specified places and made sure the door swung freely and had an even gap from the frame. At this point, it was 11:30, so I quickly added the deadbolt and fell asleep.

The next morning, I double-checked alignments, anchored the door frame completely, then installed new casing.

A nice bead of caulk filled in the gaps between the casing pieces at the corners.

I added a new threshold piece to the laminate, sealed with black caulk (to match the door base.)

Here's the new door, functional but unpainted.

With so many window panes, patience (and tape) was key to a clean finish! This was where Cathleen took over.

The door was painted in a white semi-gloss interior paint on the inside and Sherwin Williams gloss exterior white Emerald paint on the outside.

Finally finished!

This particular "upgrade" wasn't a major aesthetic change (same door style as before), but the weatherstripping is new, and I can now step on the threshold without fear of breaking the door!

Joe