DIY - part 2

Household project #2 - replace an external door

After we had replaced the sink, the next morning Shane was on a "fix it" roll & when I woke up he said to me "Want to fix the door today?" 

After spending the majority of my Saturday helping him with the sink, I really didn't want to spend my entire Sunday replacing an exterior door but I knew it had to be done & the hubby was in the mood to do it so I sucked it up & we conquered the door - together.

We have lived in this house for the past 8 years now & over the years we have been finding out how crappy of a job the crew did building it. If we could sell it tomorrow & not lose our ass on it we would in a skinny minute but unfortunately, like most homeowners we are stuck - that & we don't want to lose our ass :) So the only option we have is to sink the money into it & fix all the "problems" with it. 

For the last year, our external door to the deck was leaking when it rained - even after we put a storm door on it. Looking around the outside of the door we could not figure out where the water was coming from. We were fearing tons of damage, rotted wood & lots of mold inside the walls once we tore the door frame out so it was finally time to face our fear & assess the damage. 

This is the door we were about to tear out. Once we removed the internal door & storm door, the pics below is the water damage we found:

Upper left hand corner of the moldy, rotted out door jamb where we later figured out is where the water was getting in:

The bottom right-hand corner of the internal door jamb where the water from pic above was settling:

Bottom left of the door on the inside where you can see moldy, crumbled sheet rock which was behind the trim:

I know it looks bad but honestly we thought it was going to be much, much worse. When it came time to pull the door jamb out, I heard Shane say some "choice" words. Turns out the idiots who built the house didn't nail or screw the door jamb to the frame so it slid right out. No wonder we had all this damage!? Who doesn't secure the jamb to the frame - seriously??

The door jamb is out & the frame is exposed. Bubba supervised the entire project & thought his "Papa" did a great job :)

We assessed the door frame & it seemed there was little to no damage which was a HUGE relief so it looks like it was just the jamb that was ruined. We were able to continue the job without much trouble once we got to this point.

Shane got the new door in place, made sure it was level & nailed it to the frame - as it SHOULD have been done. Then he insulated the gaps around the new door & project #2 was almost complete.

All that is left to do now is buy new trim for around the door on the inside & put the storm door back on. We had a couple of days where it had rained so we were able to test out Shane's strong work & guess what? NO LEAKS!! Hoping the leaky problem is solved & our door last's a long, long time.

Onto project #3 :)