Front Door

Replacing our front door and improving the front steps have always been on our to do list.  The lack of a railing at the top of the steps was an obvious concern from day one and after witnessing our metal door ice over on the inside during severe cold spells we knew we had to have it replaced sooner than later.  

The Before Shot

We have always liked the brick steps, but the wall built up along the side was always a bother and we decided to take it down as part of this project.  A sledge hammer made quick and fun work of it and luckily for us it proved to be a clean removal.

Already a nice improvement

We tackled the door replacement over a weekend.  Removing the old door and glass block was not as clean and easy as the wall along the steps but in the end it cleared up pretty well.

No more door..yikes!

We removed everything down to the original door jamb and header.
The original door was huge!

For the replacement door we used an antique door  we got from a friend (Thanks Samir!).  Even after having a custom jamb fabricated ahead of time we did not finish installing the door and closing up the rest of the opening until close to 10:00PM.

New front door in place, waiting for the glass transom

 With the new door in place we tackled the railing next.  One of the nice things about not having a railing was moving larger items in and out of the house was made easy.  As such, we wanted to make sure the railing we put in could be removed when needed.  We ultimately decided on building 2 posts from 2x4s and plywood and using steel angles with metal conduit pickets to compose the rest of the railing.  We chose an aqua color as an accent to match the color of the tiles identifying our address.

Finished Shot of Railing

The final steps were to paint the new door trim, install the glass transom and repair some of the miscellaneous brick and tile work that was damaged during the project.

The After Shot... yay!