Deals, Doors, and More Sunlight

After we built a wall in the Hub, it was time to poke some holes in the Lounge side to make way for some glorious doors. The goal was to put a door on the north side and the east side, so on warm summer evenings the doors could both be opened and the loungers could enjoy a nice cross breeze. Doesn’t that sound lovely?

As part of the ongoing Lounge project, Justin and I had been on the lookout for doors. I know, that’s kind of an odd thing to say. But if you know us, you know that we frequently haunt garage sales, thrift stores, Craigslist, and even street corners when we are “on the lookout.”

We scored our first door at a garage sale last summer. We saw the door for sale and had to run home to check the measurements to see if it would work, then figure out how to get it home. The door we picked up was still wrapped in its original packaging, and we were able to look up the details online. What we picked up for 150 dollars retails for over 1,600! We knew we would need to spend some additional money to get the door in, but we were willing to take that risk. By some miracle, we were able to fit these 9’ French doors into the Prius (!) and get them home in one piece.

Brought door #1 home and spent a few hours daydreaming about how gloriously the doors would replace that window…

And, even though I’m incredibly behind in the blogosphere, we held on to this door for the better part of a year before actually installing it! There they sat, in the corner of the sad-looking Hub for a while.

Sad and lonely, waiting to become doors

We ended up paying someone to install the door for us. We were a little worried about waterproofing and because we picked up the door at a garage sale, we felt better letting someone else build the frame and find and install all the hardware. I’m sure we could have figured it out, but it would have taken a lot more than one day. So not much to report on the installation front. We swapped out the window in the before picture, and used the existing header for the new door.

That’s a pretty big hole in the wall. And yes, we have swings 🙂

Door #2 has an equally thrilling story. After much debating, we had decided to go with a large sliding door out to the patio on the north side of the Lounge. We went so far down this path that we went to Home Depot and Lowe’s and got price quotes for the type of door we wanted. Then we went home and cried because we were far to cheap to spend 2,500 dollars on a door. In a moment of shear brilliance and luck, Justin sent me this link to a post on Craigslist.

Habitat for Humanity Re-store: amazing!!

It was essentially the door we were about to buy before the crying fit! I called our local Re-Store, found it was still at the store, and asked the fine gentleman to hold it for me. Then I went to the store, deemed it worthy, and later Justin and my dad went to pick it up with the truck. 400 dollars later, this beautiful four-panel sliding door was ours for the taking. And it too sat in the sad-looking Hub for a while.

Ready and waiting, leaning on the new wall for support

Because we elected to pay someone to install door #1 (French), we opted to have them simultaneously install door #2 (sliding). We did the more extensive prep work to have this door put in, including removing the previous single door and installing this ginormous header.

And, ta-da! The space went from a dark, dreary shop to a fabulous, light-filled, door-studded Lounge!

Now for the before and afters:

Woohoo!

Yay, doors!

Time for a confession: We had the doors in before we had the drywall guy come in to tape and texture. Remember how there were conspicuously no photos of either of these walls? 🙂 We sequenced that so our drywall guy would patch the areas around the doors to make them look uniform and glorious.