Entering The Home - My Front Door - Brooklyn Berry Designs

The Front Door Is A Statement Piece

The front door is the design statement of your homes exterior. Yes, the door should be functional and secure, but the front door is the easiest place to add some style and detail to your homes appearance.

This is the front door of my house. It is purely functional in that in can open and close. The dead bolt helps people to think twice before trying to break in. But it is not only simple in design, it has seen better days. It needs a new paint job, but even worse there are dents in the door. The side light has a broken seal so it fogs up all the time. The best accessory is the half peeled security stickers. But hey! I added a new light and a cute doorbell when I first moved in. The small tasks were done, but the door was a big one.

This is the same door on the inside of my home. You can see more of the dents here. Again, it functions, but isn’t anything you would notice. In fact, if someone were looking at this house and deciding whether or not to purchase it, this door would be the last thing you would see on your way out. That would be the homes last impression.

Is it possible just to replace only the door and not the frame?

Our homes front door was in desperate need of an update. I will be honest and say I had no idea how to go about this. I wondered if we could replace the door itself and keep the frame as is. After talking with a few different people, including a door installer I learned a few things. To replace the door only the existing frame has to be square. The dimensions have to be the same. The hinges need to line up the same. Because of all the added skills it can be more cost effective and less stressful to buy a pre-hung door.

Front Door Materials –

Exterior doors are available in three main choices for material: wood, steel, and fiberglass.

Solid wood doors are the most expensive and are can warp under extreme temperatures. They need to be re-stained every few years and do best under an overhang to help protect it.
Steel doors are the least expensive and can be energy-efficient. They dent easily and can only be painted, not stained.
Fiberglass doors offer the best advantages of both steel and wood. They are energy-efficient and don’t need maintenance. They come in both smooth and wood grain finishes that can be painted or stained.

Clearly, fiberglass was needed in my life. The high-end looks and maintenance free durability made it a no brainer for me. I worked with the nicest person, Lisa at Masonite, who happened to live in my same community. She helped to double-check my measurements and asked me all the nitty gritty details about the order. What way does the door swing? What color is the threshold? The door frame? I was so happy she could explain what she needed to know and I trusted her to tell me what was typically done, or what would look odd.

Are you curious to know what I chose?

I ended up choosing a craftsman style door, sticking to the overall style of my house exterior. The door profile is the belleville textured door with the Marco glass, painted in Masonite’s in-house paint color ‘sable’. The decision to paint or stain the door was really hard for me because I wanted it to look like wood, and hoped the texture with the paint would still look nice.