Daily Home Renovation Tips

In Part 28 we reviewed some of the different installation techniques used to install the second replacement front door compared to those used for the first replacement door. In this article we focus on two additional installation techniques.

First, the height of the door frame.

The first replacement door was installed a little too low. What do we mean? Look closely at the picture below.

Two things. First notice that the door appears to be very close to the tiled interior floor. It is actually too close to the tile floor. It appears (at least to me) to leave an unfinished gap between the door and the floor.

Second, the door is so close to the tiled floor that you do not see any throw rug by the door. If you look very, very closely you will see a small part of a throw rug in the lower right of the picture. That is because the door is so close to the tile floor that it will not allow any carpet on top of the tile. If there was a throw rug up close to the door, the door would not open. This is very, very messy. When anyone enters the house they walk directly on the tile floor……as does the dirt from the bottom of their shoes or boots. Imagine how many times we had to clean the tile in the winter will all the snow we had this year. 

With the installation of the second door, Mike and Adam purposely installed the door frame higher than that for door #1. This allows us to have a throw carpet now on the tile right up to the door frame. Notice in the picture below both how close we can get the throw rug to the door so when people come into the house they can actually step on the rug. Also notice the horizontal piece of quarter round that can now be placed at the bottom of the entire width of the new door frame for a much more finished look.

Second, on the outside, look at this picture of the first door’s installation focusing again on the metal threshold. Underneath the metal threshold was a piece of wood that, yes went the full length of the threshold but, went only part of the depth or width of the threshold. This meant that when a person placed their foot on the threshold it would sink down almost to the brick. That is to say, the threshold was not fully supported by a piece of wood underneath.

As well, there was black caulking used to cover the wood that did support part of the threshold as you can see in the picture below.

Now, look at this picture of door #2’s installation. Not only was there one but actually two pieces of wood fully supporting the threshold. No more feet sinking down towards the  brick underneath. As well, what Mike and Adam did was to place some metal underneath the lip of the threshold and then vertically down 90 degrees to cover the two pieces of wood supporting the threshold.

Very nice we think.

OK, that brings us to the end of our comparison between the first and second replacement door and their respective installation. Next time we will identify what we do not really like about door #2 and it’s installation.

To continue with the next article in this series, simply select this link to Part 30.