May
13
Written by:
SuperUser Account
5/13/2008 10:03 AM
Posted by: Jeneane Becker, Sales & Marketing Coordinator
My husband and I are quite the do-it-yourselfers…me by choice, him by coercion.
So I decided that we were perfectly capable of installing our new entry door, especially since I work at a company that does just that. Surely, I had enough know-how to follow the simple step-by-step instructions—I picked it up through osmosis, right?
We had conveniently forgotten all of the past projects we struggled through because there seems to be absolutely nothing standard on our 1980s cookie-cutter townhouse.
We worked a very long Saturday—about 11 hours—to install the new entry door.
Problem 1: Removing the old door… The instructions said it would be easy to remove in one piece and should take only a few minutes. For more than an hour, we pried away the frame (splinter-by-splinter, it seemed) until we had a pile of trim, framing and a door panel on our front lawn.
Problem 2: The new door didn’t quite fit the opening… It was the same size, but the header was too tight, so we didn’t have the clearance to tilt it into the frame like the instruction said. Our house must have been built around the old door! We decided to lift it and shimmy it upright back into the frame—but only after some lengthy brainstorming and discussion.
Problem 3: Even though the exterior trim was the exact same size (déjà vu?)… It just would not fit into the wooden façade surrounding the entry. By then, it was dark out… So with a utility knife and a chisel, my husband took to notching out the façade about a ¼ inch around for the trim—again only after much discussion and cross-examination.
Since then, I have been told that our company’s crews can install an entry door in only a couple hours—they must work miracles…
But finally after a long Saturday and many work-around solutions, we have a new entry door! Now, all we need to do is paint it…
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