Front Entry Remodel

Back in November, Travis & I ordered a new front door for our house. Here are a few pictures from the remodel.

This is what the front entry looked like on the day we bought our house. We quickly removed the wrought iron which opened the entry up right away. We knew it would be awhile before we could get to replacing the front door, but we could live with this for now.

Inside was a built-in planter box. This was the first thing we demolished in the house.

What we didn’t know, was that the slab was counter sunk in this area to accommodate the terrazzo tile and the planter box. As I was chipping the tile out, the “concrete” under the tile sounded very hollow. After a few more swings of the hammer, Travis & I discovered that the concrete was not part of the slab of the house and all of it had to be removed.

That left us with a huge hole in the slab roughly 8 feet long, 4 feet wide, and 3 inches deep. It all had to be filled in and level with the existing slab.

Before we could pour new concrete, we had to remove the old front door and side light. Of course, it’s December and cold, so we put plywood up and screwed it to the house to keep out most of the cold. This also gave us room to work.

The footing the old front door was on was also not connected to the existing slab and Travis could move it with his hand, so we also tore that out.

We started pouring concrete around 10 p.m. Travis’ dad came over to help, thankfully, because we could not have gotten it done without him! Here, dad is wetting the existing, sunken slab with water to help the new concrete adhere to the old. He also painted full strength cement on the vertical sides to help the new concrete bond to the old.

Travis poured the first two wheelbarrows full, then he took over the troweling, while his dad & I mixed concrete. It took just under 20 bags of concrete to fill this hole.

After the concrete had set, it had to be covered for five days to cure. We could walk on it the next day, so we left it as covered as possible and got to work installing the new door and side light.

Even Elizabeth helped!

Travis also moved the old switches around the corner so that the interior entry, exterior entry, and exterior flood lights were all together on the same wall.

So…This is before…

And this is after!  We removed all of the plywood from the entry (except for the ceiling) and replaced it with new, grooved cedar. We also put in cedar to trim the door. Travis took down the light fixture, cleaned the glass and painted the frame black. We replaced the doorbell and put a new cover on the outlet. After a couple of coats of “Caribbean Walk” paint, the exterior entry is complete!

This is how the front door looks from inside of the house. We have not trimmed it yet, because we are trying to decide what type of trim to go with in this part of the house and we have three exterior doors that we would like trimmed the same.

Also, this door and side light are stainable textured fiberglass. It has a wood grain texture. This is not the final color of the door. We needed to get the exterior painted before we picked out a stain color. We’re thinking something brown with no red in it. I may wait until spring to take the door off and stain it so I’ll have nicer weather. It’s just too cold now to live without a front door for a week!