We have been eagerly awaiting this day — the day when the miserable, hard-to-open exterior door in the family room would be replaced with a high-quality, modern slider.
Despite a rainstorm, the guys from Wesson built a temporary shelter above the opening and removed the old door, which promptly fell apart. Good riddance.
After preparing the opening and laying a bead of caulk, the new door was manhandled into place. The new slider is extremely heavy and took a lot of muscle to install.
And it’s in! The new door has mini-blinds between the inner and outer panes of glass. We plan to use that feature a lot to allow light to enter without sacrificing privacy.
The new doors have a greater-than-expected impact on the look and feel of our home. The switch from plain dark wood doors to two-panel Roman-style white doors makes the house feel bigger and brighter.
We are adding an exterior water faucet (for a garden hose) outside the family room near the new slider. To gain access to the nearest water line meant removing some of the knotty pine paneling in the quilt studio.
We don’t like the dark paneling anyway, so we decided to remove one whole wall of it to give the plumber easier access for connecting the outside faucet. We’ll replace this section of paneling with drywall, then paint the room, paneling and all, a lighter color.