Daily Home Renovation Tips

In Part 24 we described the events leading up to the new replacement door that was going to be installed in place of the original replacement door.

Well, it did not occur to me that the new installation date was to be June 13; yes, Friday the 13th! Yikes! Good thing I am not superstitious.

Now, I like to think that I am a ‘cup is half full’ kind of guy. Taking that approach the next several articles in this series will focus on both the improved installation as well as the improved door. No, the replacement door for the initial replacement door was not installed with 100.0% satisfaction. But, I will let you be the judge. Am I being too picky? Am I expecting too much? Believe me when I say that we are not writing this series to find fault with anyone. We are writing this series because it’s not every day that a home owner has a front door replaced. Most don’t. Front doors are very expensive. Our intent is to inform others before they undertake their own exterior replacement door so they (perhaps you?) know what to look out for so it doesn’t happen to you.

Now, we left off how we did not hear back from Amy, the primary customer support representative for the big box building materials retailer after leaving messages over several days. We finally were able to reach Amyon the phone  live on June 13th, the morning of the installation.

At this point there would not be any pre-inspection of the existing front door by the retailers installation service manager and the hand picked installer (indicated by Amy to be the best installer they have) as promised by Amy back in the spring. This pre-inspection was desired by the retailer, per Amy, to ensure that the mistakes made the first time did not happen again.

And, no the hand picked installer was not the one who would do the installation. Mike was the name, along with Adam (you need two people to install even a single door if it has right and left panels with glass inserts in the door frame). As we will discuss, Mike and Adam did a pretty good job. However, again, we were promised something that was not ‘delivered’.

Justin was the name of the intended installer. He did ‘drop by’ for a few minutes part way through the installation and at the end once it was all wrapped up. However, to me, that is not the same as actually doing the installation.

Another Mike came over at the beginning. This second Mike was the supervisor of the company who was actually doing the installation on behalf of the retailer. Remember, if a retailer offers installation services usually (at least in our area) they hire contractors or sub-contractors to do the actual work. Both Mikes and Adam and Justin were all very nice and seemed to be working in our best interests.

Lastly, we were told that the retailer’s own installation services representative, Christine, was also to ‘drop by’. But of course, as it happens to us frequently with many of our home renovation experiences, expect the unexpected. Christine’s boss at the last minute not able to go to work on June 13th so Christine had to cover for him. So, not one person who was actually an employee of the retailer ‘droppped by’ throughout or after the installation.

Now, Mike (the supervisor) did go out of his way to have us happy with the installation. And we do appreciate it. One of the items that was not even on the list of deficiencies was the crown molding used on top of replacement door #1’s door frame. It was about a good 1/2 inch too narrow. The result of this was that once replacement door #1 had been installed we had some exposed drywall that needed to be fixed before it could be painted. Look at the picture below of replacement door #1 before I had painted the crown molding; specifically, look at the wall immediately above the upper crown molding to see how the drywall seems damaged.

When I pointed this out to both Mikes, Mike (the supervisor) ensured that on one of his trips during the day to the retail store included obtaining at no cost to us wider crown molding that would go around the top, the left and the right sides of replacement door #2’s door frame so that we would not need to worry about fixing that area of the drywall.

Above is a picture of the top crown molding after replacement door #2 had been installed. Other than the need to paint it and a few other items we will talk about in a future article, this wider crown molding made a big difference. Notice that the drywall immediately above crown molding looks perfect.

Thanks Mike (the supervisor) for obtaining the crown molding with the proper width for the job.

In the next article in this series (tomorrow) we will start to go through the aspects of the replacement door #2 itself that is different from replacement door #1. The following articles will focus on the differences in the installation which made for a superior installed front door.

To continue with the next article in this series, simply select this link to Part 26.