A New Project

This may actually just be a distraction from starting my next new boat build, but the wife has a project for me. There is one door that goes off of the kitchen to the backyard directly to some concrete steps that are starting to crumble. They go down to a stone path that was starting to buckle and crumble. The pergola at the end of the path was bright, clean, and open when we bought the house, and we used it regularly several times over the first year or two we were here. Now it's overgrown, the furniture in there is rotten and the entire thing has become an eyesore.

So the crumbling stairs go down and a nice large deck goes up in its place. And my boatbuilding blog is getting some general woodworking and home repair content. The first part of this formula was to take a window in the dining room and cut it out into a large hole. Then install a french door in the hole.

Inside starting point - I already had the doors off of those corner cabinets by the time I took the "before" picture

Cabinets are getting relocated

And the plaster wall came down

I could go ahead and install some framing to rough out the door opening

We started with a 5' window, and picked out a 6' door. Our house was built in 1932, so there are plaster walls and no insulation in the exterior walls. This drives me nuts. Every chance we get, we rip down the plaster walls to install insulation and drywall. We made it this far during the week, but we had to have the right day to actually put huge hole in the house. Some thunderstorms delayed our progress for a bit.

Window is out! Kelley wields a mean demo hammer

bloody demolition man

Starting to cut out the hole

ah, that's a nice hole

Ella approves

cut. it. out.

that does go all the way through!

We picked up the door from home depot. Actually, we got a quote from a contractor first. If we supplied the door, his crew would do all of this and install the ledger board for the new deck. It looks like we're going to be able to do the entire project ourselves for about 1/3 of the cost. Now that the hole is all cut, let's install the new door!

Got the header into the framing and the door is installed

Exterior of the door

Finished product of the weekend

So now we have a door to nowhere. But both doors open and close, they are level square and plum. Of course we did this on a 95* day in North Carolina. It was a long and very painful day to get that door installed. But we got it all done ourselves and it did not leak (at first). Now for step 2.