New door today - looks great!

The new back door went in today, and I am pleased to say it looks INCREDIBLE! It adds so much life to the house and is a real upgrade. I love the door I picked. I can't believe this house is over 50 years old and nobody ever thought to put in good backyard access. When we got dinged at inspection for not having large enough windows, we decided to go ahead and turn one of the windows into a door. We had planned to do it later on our next permit, but the inspector said it was okay to do it now. I am so glad to have this door! I must have told C 50 times today how much I love this door. It makes the room look beautiful - You look out and see green (well green weeds for now, but eventually grass). From outside, it is so inviting. The house and yard feel connected in way they never did before.

Prior to installing this back door, to get to the backyard you could go out the side door, down a flight of steps, and climb over a retaining wall. Or you could walk out the front door, turn sideways and squeeze past the car(s) and then walk back. We always envisioned adding a back door so anyone outside wasn't so separated from everyone inside. We had originally wanted to put the door at the end of the central hallway (there's a large closet there now) and I was disappointed to find out we couldn't do it without a lot of construction and big bucks. Now that I have seen the door installed where it is, it is really growing on me. We also may be able to squeeze in a half bath in the closet we were going to lose in order to put the door at the end of the hall. If we could squeeze that additional bath in, I could be happy living here with no more construction. We have talked about as a long term plan, relocating the garage and doing a two story addition which would give us an attached garage with a master suite on top. C also made a point that putting the door at the end of the hall would give us 6 more feet of essentially useless hallway space. By converting a window to a door, we lose no useful square footage.

A final advantage of this placement for the door (aside from a HUGE amount of money and hassle over the alternate location) is that if we can do a half or three-quarter bath in the closet, we could have a great master suite to market if we ever sell the house. The room with the door is one of the two bigger bedrooms and has the largest closet. Add to that deck access and a private bath, and well, that's a master suite.

I am please with how fast the work got done this week - this must be what it is like to work with a real contractor! They simply did the job with minimal effort by me (some of the contractors I've hired needed a lot of babysitting and asked me questions that made me really question their competence).

Here is the opening for the door:



Here is the door in place. It is hard to tell how bright it makes the room because the light sensor on my camera darkens the room when there is high contrast like this.

This is a "before" shot from the back of the backyard. Looks as inviting as a fortress.

And now, come on in! It looks so inviting.