Category Archives: Entryway

After the saga of refinishing our front door and then the exhausting process of getting it properly hung, we were ecstatic to do a simple hardware swap.  We were still 100% in love with our front door, but as time went on, we knew we wanted to dress it up a bit, and the best way to do that cleanly… a new handle set!  We ended up selecting a shapely, vintage-inspired set by Kwikset.  It was truly love at first sight!  Kwikset handle sets can be purchased with an easy-key option, so that you can rekey all of your locks for your house to one key!  Sounds great, right?  We LOVE it!  After all, who wants tons of keys to get into one house.  That’s nuts! All installed, this handle set is the perfect contrast to our ultra-modern front door.  I think it perfectly mixed our personalities… a little modern, a little old-school! In addition to the new handle set, we took the time to add a new door stop to the bottom of the door… after all, we don’t want this door banging into anything!  Also see… no more gap underneath the door!  That seriously makes me happy beyond words! Nothing gives me more pleasure than walking up to our lovely, amazing modern door, now adorned with a shapely, vintage-inspired handle set! WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE NEW HANDLE SET?  IS IT TOTALLY WRONG OR PERFECTLY RIGHT?  DO YOU MIX STYLES IN YOUR HOMES? *** I was not compensated for writing about our Kwikset handles.  We simply love them, love the product, and thought you guys might too… and purchased them ourselves at Lowes. Blog this! Bookmark on Delicious Digg this post Recommend on Facebook Share on Linkedin Share on netvibes share via Reddit Share with Stumblers Tumblr … Continue reading

If you’ve got a door that just isn’t hanging properly, you may want to consider beating the door frame into submission!  That’s what we did… and here’s our story: After a long saga, refinishing our front door, it was pure elation having the door back in place.  It was a night-and-day situation.  I hated our old door that acted as a place holder while I refinished our mahogany door, and I absolutely missed the beautiful morning light that would beam in through the mahogany door’s frosted windows.  It was pure sadness.  BUT, as soon as the door was refinished and back in place, we got a rude awakening… the door would no longer close with the weather stripping on the bottom. Thus, this beautiful door got cozy in the interim with a bold, bright beach towel that was rolled up at it’s base.  A cute little love-hate relationship developed… seriously. With the towel in place, we were able to prevent any significant draft, but we were also barred from really using the front door.  See the gap under the door… ya, that’s our plants and porch outside… No joke! Whomp whomp… And this was no quick fix.  After some investigation, we came to the conclusion that we had a pretty significant sagging problem, leaving a reveal at top, and tightness at the bottom.  We brainstormed for months about how best to resolve this issue.  To repair a reveal and sagging issue, these were our options: shim the hinges to see if it would make enough of a difference pop off the door trip and shim the door frame reframe the whole door beat the frame into proper position None of these options seemed particularly simple, except for shimming the hinges.  So, naturally, we tried that first.  After placing three cardboard … Continue reading

So, if you remember from our House Crashers Episode, our front door looked like this… Then… THIS started to appear in pictures (though I tried desperately NOT to photograph that awfulness)… (You can see “before” pictures of the entry way in our Home Tour tab) Did you catch that?  Yup?  Ya, we got an amazingly gorgeous solid Mahogany door via our House Crashers’ crash!  In case you’re wondering where it’s from, its from an amazing Southern California company called ETO doors (you can find them on Facebook too)!  I have literally fallen head-over-heals for so many of their doors!  BUT, the House Crashers folks could NOT have picked a more perfect door for us and we LOVE them for it!!! Ok, so here is where the “progress” comes in.  During the three-day insanity where we accomplished a million projects for the show, the front door was “finished” on the inside with a clear polyeurethane, but the outside of the door was left unfinished, so that we could “finish” it in the color and sheen that we wanted on our own time. Well… “our own time” became about six months, and worried that the outside of the door would begin to weather, we took it down and stored it in our garage until we could address it.  Since we were then door-less, we replaced the hole with our old door.  MUCH safer, but HORRENDOUSLY UGLY now that we had been spoiled with this stunning solid wood door! We ended up living with it that way for quite some time, while we tackled other projects.  BUT, the time came where I just couldn’t handle it anymore (can you hear me screaming that?!?!?)!  So, I decided to strip the entire door and start from scratch.  Why? you ask.  Because I can…  No, not … Continue reading