I mean, I guess somewhere in my subconscious, I realized that people used to build doors themselves all the time, back in the days when folks had to be much more self-sufficient, but how many people do you know who’ve made a door? Because most of the exterior doors I’ve lived with have been metal, I never really thought about the potential for building a door on one’s own. But, as Eli pointed out, his parents have a lovely handmade wooden door as the front door to their house. So, Eli did some research, watched some internet videos, and with very little help from me, produced an amazing wooden door from leftover 2×6’s from our floor framing (we’d gotten some awesome locally milled beetle-killed pine for our floor framing – with it’s beautiful blue highlights, we were excited to be able to use it somewhere visible, too!)
But first things first, building the frame for the door. The threshold we bought pre-built from Lowe’s or Home Depot, but ended up later having to make modifications to it because it leaked on a door fit test run. We weren’t impressed with the design (hence the reason we’ve been ending up just building many things ourselves…).
Then, the door build. Like I said, Eli did this mostly without me, so I don’t have a lot of details. But, luckily he was good about taking photos.
Before the final install of the door, we put the exterior trim around the door frame and added weatherstripping. The first weatherstripping we tried, we got from Lowe’s or Home Depot, but again we were unimpressed, so we… okay, this time we did not try to make it ourselves! But, we did head back to a search of the internet. I found a company that looked like they had much higher quality weatherstripping, so we crossed our fingers and put in an order. We’re definitely much happier with the better stuff.
Finally, the finished product installed and providing the perfect entry into our house!
You guys are genius’s. What a beautiful door. Did you have to use special glass.
Wondered why the you used shingles? Are they no longer called hinges?
Love, Dad
Thanks! I love the door! It’s exactly what I was hoping for. We ordered the glass from the place where we ordered the windows, so it’s double-paned, tempered, and has a breather tube for elevation, just like our window glass. Sorry, the “shingles” on the door was a synapse misfiring! They’re still called hinges! Oops! Thanks for pointing that out, I’ve fixed it on the photo captions.