patio cover and back door

Before we left for the summer we had a patio cover made (Jeff helped). It turned out really well and I am so happy to have some shade where we can enjoy being outside together. With the new patio came the need to paint it. It seems the projects never end :).


We have lots of red barn paint we had used for some of our fence so we figured we'd use that on the patio as well.

This is what the first coat looked like.


Kind of hard to tell from the photos, but we like it.


Once we had the first coat on (the 2nd is done now too by the way), we looked at the back door and realized the trim really needed to be painted as well. After Jeff did some examining of the trim he started thinking seriously about replacing the whole door. We have some rot issues, on the trim, we would like a dead bolt on the back door, and the door doesn't fit well - tons of air leaks through that door. With all the issues against the door and since we were already in the middle of the project we decided to replace the back door.

Here is Jeff taking off the outer caulk - I forgot to take pictures earlier, too busy helping :)



The corner where the board had been rotted through.

Once everything was cleaned out and ready for the new door we got it in and it didn't fit so well. It turned out that the door was too long for the cement threshold that had been made in front of the last door. That gave Jeff a reason to get out the big drill and remove some cement.

Here it is waiting for the last piece to be chipped away for the door to fit into place. Jeff did a great job removing the excess cement without damaging the other cement!

After fitting, shimming, nailing, screwing, the door was ready to be insulated. I forgot to mention that our previous back door (once we took off the trim) had no insulation or shims. Man, it was time to be replaced!

Here is the finished product that night. The new boards and door still need to be painted, but otherwise it is awesome!

Here is the inside of the door. I like the new trim we got to go around it. It is also waiting for paint. Our last door was blue, but we won't be doing the same blue for this one. It's a lot of white so we will be painting it a color, just not sure which one (probably the cabinet color, however I think a navy would look cool).

It is funny to me how one house project starts and leads to so many other things. Jeff would love to redo our front door now and even get new flooring, I would love new counters. Oh if that schooling didn't always get in the way our house would constantly have a project going on :). It is a blessing to do things yourself - you learn a lot (this was our first door to put in)! I'm grateful that Jeff is so willing to improve our home and learn new things!