New doors on an old (or kinda old) house are an underutilized upgrade. Maybe because it’s expensive, considering it doesn’t change your life in any way. Regardless, we upgraded the front door and transom in our Eureka Victorian and we loved it! It made the house feel modern and well thought out. The old door was ugly and super drafty, so we could argue that we increased efficiency and saved money. I suspect that the curb appeal from the new door is part of how we had multiple offers and were able to sell the house so quickly, so maybe it even paid for itself.

The doors at the ranch were in serious need of an upgrade, especially the back door. The front door was admittedly kind of cool. It was a wide slab with a fashionable mid century star door knob. Trouble is, no deadbolt (!!) We tried not to worry about the lack of deadbolt too much, considering that the knob looked original and appeared to have never been tampered with.

Plus there was a screen door on the front that held a tiny bit of smoke smell from the previous owners. We never used the screen doors, other than to buffer @scout_the_intrepid when she goes crazy at the front door. The back door was pretty bad, though. Single pane glass, no deadbolt, drafty.

We decided that the 2018 roadmap of upgrades included new Simpson doors and Emtek hardware (same brands that we did at the Manor). The Simpson doors are lovely and solid. We went for serious mortised Emtek hardware, this time in a brushed bronze.

We’re pretty handy, but framing and installing two new doors on our house is a bit out of scope for us. We may do the garage door ourselves some day, mainly because if it takes a few days, we won’t be much affected, and it doesn’t have to be perfect.

In Eureka, I had some high school buddies in construction who we knew and trusted to do the doors. They did a great job and were awesome to have around. It pays to have the local connection if you can swing it. But even though we’re getting to know Portland, we had to go to google to find an installer. There are several pages of companies who do this kind of work, and we picked one that looked pretty standard and focused on doors & windows. They took forever to get our doors and hardware in, and there was a month long additional delay because they messed up the measurements, but at the end of the day, they did a really nice job and we’re happy.