Wednesday 14 September 2011

I adore my door

Way back in the beginning of July, we started our house project with 4 jobs to get done before we could move in. A biggie was replacing our front door, which was a glass sliding patio door. In typical fashion of our house, it was installed backwards, with the slider on the outside, instead of the inside (meaning you could never securly lock the door).


It took us longer than we expected to select the door we wanted, and then even longer than that to get it ordered. The initial price on the door we wanted was north of $5,000, which neither us nor our supplier could believe. We made some minor adjustments to the design and the price dropped to under $1,500, which caused even more confusion, for neither we nor our supplier could believe such a dramatic price drop had occurred with so minor a change being made. In the end, we ordered a door that was almost the same as our initial spec at less than half the cost.


It finally arrived late last week, and was mostly installed yesterday.
The old door removed
The hole
The new door as shipped
Installed, mostly
We still have to get casing for it and it will be painted as part of painting the rest of the house.


If you look carefully, the style of glass we selected is Mondrian. This was in honour of Piet Mondrian and our Amsterdam trip. Piet was an influential Dutch artist, and we saw some of his work in Amsterdam and The Hague. The inside glass is a little more textured than we wanted, and the glass is just in shades of gray instead of bold blues, reds, yellows and blacks, but it's still a nice reminder.


Replacing the door is very exciting for us, as it feels as if we are finally making progress on getting our new home ready to occupy. We came very close to getting the work we need done on the water well last week, but were foiled by lack of access to a backhoe, and in the meantime, we have no water. We finally contracted with painters, but they won't start for almost 2 weeks. Fireplace guy is still taking his own sweet time getting my fireplace installed.


So our other projects aren't going so well, and as a result, the door to us is a big deal. How the mighty have fallen.

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