Daily Home Renovation Tips

In Part 30 we had described what we felt were deficiencies with the installation of the replacement door for the replacement door by the building supply retailer, namely:

• caulking not done on the molding on the part of the interior door frame above the door
• excessive number of finishing nails which were not sufficiently recessed into the frame
• damage to the grass on the front lawn caused by leaving the glass insert from the first replacement door all day

I had to travel out of town the following week, but on Sunday I left a message for Amy, the head office customer service representative who was handling our case. On Tuesday Cath, my wife, called to tell me that the building supply retailer had called her to arrange to have someone come out to our home to inspect our indicated deficiencies.

They were out the next day. All of the finishing nails were recessed into the door frame molding and wood filler applied to the resultant holes. Here are some pictures of the ‘finished’ product.

I will need to sand the wood filler, then prime and paint the door frame that was not primed at all as well as the molding itself. Personally, I would have used white wood filler to not cause me to possibly require an extra coast of white paint should the brown wood filler still show through after my initial priming and paint application. Oh, well.

They did forget, however, to apply caulking to the gap between the wall and the molding on the interior door frame above the door. This has to be done; otherwise you are leaving a possible ‘leakage’ point in the house through which cold air can escape in the summer / warm air in the winter causing your utility bills to go up.

And, as for the grass, they said to let them know if it does not grow back and they will come back and put down fresh sod.

So, is this the end of our exterior replacement door series? No. Yes, I have to prime and paint the door frame and molding, but I have already written about that from the first replacement door.

You are likely curious to hear about any compensation offered by the building supply retailer for us having to experience this 9+ month saga of our replacement front door. And we will tell you about it …… not ‘after the break’ as Ryan Seacrest likes to say on American Idol; rather, we will tell you in our next and last article in this series.

To access the next article in this series, simply select this link to Part 32.