Just when you thought we were done posting about the front door, we’re back with another riveting post on how to fix it. How exciting right?! Or are you more of an “okay, okay, enough about your old front door and how to fix it, just move on already” kind of person? I’m definitely one from the later group. I just want to be done with the door. If you’re just joining us, we posted about our great front door fixes here and here. Go ahead…go read ’em…we’ll wait for ya. All set? So after the last re-installation of the front door, we noticed some serious daylight coming through between the door and the jam:
Hmmmm…not good. Colby, the doorman that he is (he’s a window/door/mill work salesman), declared a state of emergency in our house and we halted all other house projects until the door was fixed. It was also a football Sunday so we had to hustle before the Patriots came on (his team…not mine…I’m more of a Giants fan…surprisingly it hasn’t hurt our relationship too badly…yet). So down came the door (again) to make some minor adjustments. First thing’s first, the door was a little saggy because there was nothing for the screws that attached the brackets to the jam to grip into. Down came the trim and up went reinforcements:
Colby just added a few blocks of scrap wood where the screws for the hinges would go. This gave the screws something solid to latch onto. Next, I took advantage having the door elsewhere for a few hours and painted the entire door jam. It went from this, pre-painted:
To this, freshened up with my go-to trim paint, Valspar’s Betsy’s Linen:
Then we re-attached the door using extra, super long, 4″ screws to do the fastening of the hinges to the jam:
Attached some basic weather stripping:
Oh…and I also touched up the paint on the hinges from my ooops moment back here. Much improved, oil rubbed bronze door hinges:
The weather stripping/new blocking/long screws combo made a humungous improvement. Although it hasn’t reached perfect ten status yet…so stay tuned for yet another “we fixed our door…again” post. I am…so….sorry. Once the door closed up real tight with no major daylight gaps coming through, we realized that wasn’t enough. We are dealing with a slightly warped, 100 year old door that closes perfectly on the bottom but not on the top. You can’t quite tell in this pic, but trust us, it’s there.
The top of the door is all loosie goosie. We’re thinking some type of latch or hook at the top of the door would be just the door doctor’s order. Who knows, maybe we’ll find an old world style latch at a flea market or antique shop this winter that will be perfect for the door. At least now we know that snow won’t start drifting through the door when the snow starts flying in oh….one month. Oh, it’s coming my fellow Maine-ahs! It’s coming!
Pssst…Is anybody else out there starting to winterize their pad, gearing up for the upcoming colder months? Any suggestions? Because we’re all about trying to up the energy efficient ante this heating season and we’d love to hear about the things our readers do.
If it were me, I woukd have tried to find a perfectly good 100 year old door and replaced the door you have instead of going through all that you have to fix it. But then I’m lazy that way.