Our New Front Door

Remember that time when a conversation about replacing our front door turned into a conversation about jacking up the house an inch or so? Well in case you don't here is how it unfolded . . .

This summer we came up with a list of home improvement projects that we thought we'd be able to tackle from both an experience point of view and a financial one. On that list was replacing the front door. During our home inspection a year ago it was brought to our attention that some of the wood underneath the door was rotten. So prevent that from getting worse and to bring more light into our living room we thought we would replace the old hollow core door with a new steel door that had a larger glass panel in it.

After picking up all our supplies from home depot and reviewing some instructions online we felt adequately prepared for replacing our front door. So with one of Marc's good friends visiting for 4th of July we decided to tackle the door replacement.

But oh, if only it was that simple. You see once we got the front door off we quickly realized that our problem was much worse then just some rotted wood underneath the door. The rot extended through the wood, into the rim joist and the sill plate. When trying to figure out how much of the rim joist needed to be repaired we had to remove some of the wooden shingles from the walls of our house and realized that some of the plywood sheathing on the outside of our house was also rotten. Our project quickly turned from replacing our front door to fixing this hole.

Marc's friend helped with the removal of all the rotten wood and figuring out a plan of attack. But unfortunately he had to return to New York and our weekend project turned into a 5 day project. Thankfully we were able to keep the propped up door "locked" with some plastic utensils.

Our first goal was to replace about 7 feet of the sill plate. In case you don't know what that is it's the piece of wood that sits on top of the foundation and underneath the floor joists. We thought this was going to be the hard part but it actually turned out to be the easier part of the job. Using a sawzall we cut the sill plate into pieces removing the rotten parts from in between the floor joists, but leaving small pieces for the floor joists to rest on. Since those pieces were rotten on the outside we cut them in half which then allowed us to tap the new sill plate in. Once that was halfway in we could remove the remaining pieces of the sill plate. It looked a little like this . . . 

The next part was the tricky part. We thought that we would be able to just slide the new rim joist in with no problem. Unfortunately the placement of our concrete steps combined with the fact that wood isn't very bendy meant that there was no way the rim joist would just slide into place. In order to get it underneath the walls of the house we realized we would have to lift the house a couple of inches to give ourselves clearance. After consulting the internet, youtube, our contractor neighbor and Marc's Uncle Billy who recommended to throw lumber at it we decided to jack up the house. 

Marc built a frame from 2x4s to distribute the lift across the 6 floor joists we needed to lift. We then rested the frame on top of some wall jacks. With help of Marc's cousin Erin and a few twists of the jacks ... our house was lifted enough to slide in the new rim joist. 

It was a little scary to hear the house creaking as we slowly raised the floor but it was reassuring to find the floor level after all was said and done. Plus we no longer had any rot around our front door. The rest of the project involved resheathing the outside of the house with plywood and moisture barrier then replacing the rotten shingles. And finally getting around to the original plan of installing the new door.

The last step of the project was taking the primed front door and painting it blue. Something Marc and I have been looking forward to for a long time. No more faded red (almost pink) door to look at when we come home. Now we have this! 

It's amazing to me how much light now enters our living room with the new door. During the first week 

I kept having to do a double take to make sure we hadn't left the front door open. I also didn't realize how updated the living room would feel with this small change. It's definitely feeling more like our house.