Our front door has always been drafty. We've installed weather stripping. twice, we've used a draft snake and pushed rugs up against it and worn extra sweaters. We've also talked, at length, about getting a new door. The problem with that is that I dislike new doors. Because unless you are willing to spend a fortune, which we aren't, even if we had a fortune to spend, you're going to end up with metal or fiberglass or something that is not wood. And my bungalow lovers heart just can't do it. So when we were visiting friends on frigis night and realized that they had their (old, wooden) door wide open but the house was toasty warm thanks to the nice, new, tightly sealed storm door.Storm door! My only experience with storm doors prior to this has been the aluminum variety. You know the type. Mostly metal, never latches quite right, sequels horribly when you try to lower the glass and let some air in, if it can come down at all and isn't jammed forever in a half up-half down position. But of course there are all new storm doors with big, open panels of glass and fancy soft closing hinge thingies. We needed one. Soon.
And after checking out all the options we decided that a white full glass style door would blend in with our door trim and keep us at least a little warmer (although, how warm can you possible be when it's 14 degrees outside?) and picked it up Saturday.Having been told by the oh so helpful Lowe's guy that it would take about 30 minutes to put the door in, we waited until the kids were in bed, opened up the box and found, a black door.
Black.
That helpful Lowe's guy had helped us to the wrong door. Which should have tipped us off about the 30 minutes thing.
I actually thought for a minute that maybe a black door would look ok, that's how much I didn't want to go back to Lowes. But considering how much sweat, blood and tears went into choosing the house color, back I went on Sunday to get the white framed door. And once again waiting until the kids went to bed to get started. And two hours in, we had a door that didn't quite fit. Because doorways in old houses aren't particularly square.
So. The house is still cold and the dining room has storm door parts propped up around it and "30 minutes" is starting to look like "not until next weekend". But I keep reminding myself that the door will be in one of these days and the house will be warmer. And in the summer we can try putting the screen in. I say try, because our cat has a bizarre habit of leaping onto screens as high up as she can and just hanging there yowling in a way that sounds more like intense cursing than normal cat noises, so chances are the screen wont really last long, but it will be worth a try.