Inviting the World Properly...

When we found our lovely home it had a fairly new Lowes-issue glass door that replaced the original... the first step was to remove that door and all of the jim-crackery that was pushed in around it to make it stick-
until we had a perfectly empty place to start! The problem with this particular project is that you have to be able to begin and end the project in one day- otherwise there's a huge hole in the front of the building... not so good!

One of our neighbors, (Pat Blue), had in her yard sale a 120 year-old door that she had acquired with and eye toward installing it in her house... that never happen so now it gets to live the next phase of it's life attached to our house!

It's resting here, for a moment, before I trim it up to fit in the new opening... Because we added a whole new layer to the inside of the house for all of that wonderful insulation and electricity, we have to create a pocket that now reaches from the outside of the brick face to the inside of the new wall.

I decided to do this with layers of A/C exterior grade plywood as soon I as figured out that even though the walls that I put in the interior of the house were plumb, the brick walls on the exterior of the house were not! By using the plywood I could cut a trapezoid that gave the appearance that both sides were level and true!
This also allowed me to attach the wood to the fairly random places that were allowed for in the brick and the nice and secure places in the new framing.

Next it's all about the chisel! I suppose that there is some new fangled thing that makes a bunch of noise and dust that zips out the insets for hinges and the door hardware but... we did it 'old school' with a mallet and chisel.

This takes a while and has to be done, tested, done again, tested... Kind of like adding salt to the soup! You can always do a little more but you can't take it away once you've done it! So... no stopping for lunch today!

After re-milling the door to match the new opening (the door was previously in a space that was not square and so I had to trim bits off of the sides, top and bottom to make it square again), and with a little help keeping the door vertical, I get to attach the door to the new opening:

If everything is as it should be then the door will 'hang' (without moving) in any position open and will swing smoothly to close with a 'snick' when it reaches the jam...
a little primer, a doorknob, a little molding and some doodads that came off of an antique wardrobe that someone trashed...
and it looks like it was that way from the very beginning! Later, if we can, I'll replace the door mechanisms with some of the antique stuff that I've been collecting... we'll certainly paint the door something fun!

Welcome y'all!