Friday April 19

Emboldened by yesterday’s success to install the two windows, we decided that today, the Kenwoodstreet home needed to get a door opening on the Kenwoodstreet side of the house. In other words, the front porch needed a door.

This project is significantly more complicated than what meets the eye. Let me list the steps that I had planned for this project in my project spreadsheet:

• Reframe the porch wall for a 36-inch door
• Cut the hole in the porch wall for the frame.
• Build the oak door frame, install the door frame and the trim.
• Install the threshold, with the necessary flashing and water proofing.
• Modify the 42-inch wide dutch door to become a 36-inch wide dutch door
  • Take the stile from one side of each door partition (dutch doors have a separated top and bottom partition, which can open separately.
  • Take 6 inches of each rail (5 in total), and ensure that the mortise and tenon connection is rebuilt
  • Cut the recessed panel, mimic the taper, put panel back in slot
  • Put the stiles back and secure with glue and a very long screw. Recess the screw head such that the hole can be covered with a dowel
  • Cut the glass of the top door section
  • Place and secure glass back into door
• Mortise the frame to hold the 4 hinges (2 on top section and two on the bottom section)
• Hang the door
• Place door stops
• Fix door lock, such that the door can be closed and locked.

The other part of the project was to add windows in the porch, however, when we installed the door frame and the trim, we determined that there was simply no room to install the windows and secure the siding in between the windows and the door. The plan is now to add octagonal stained glass windows on each side of the door.

This day we only got to install the frame, the threshold and the trim. We did start the modification of the door to be 36-inch wide, but we ran out of time and out of steam.