In keeping with "Door-a-palooza/2012", Erin needed a new front door (and a little more) and yesterday found me tearing out a good bit of the entryway.
Erin scored one of the early foreclosures in the neighborhood and has been slowly bringing it back to life. At some point in the house's history, the original doorknob broke and the owner (or bank) replaced the deadbolt with a second knob as opposed to replacing the original knob — odd. They then proceeded to cover the adjoining post with metal-plate and bond-o stripping it of almost all of it's structural integrity… and for some reason, that post was never mounted to the concrete below, which means with a swift kick, the entire door and adjacent screen would collapse (ask me how I know: Erin has a good action shot!).
She's also on a pretty tight renovation budget, so knowing that we needed to do a bit of structural work (but do it right), we chose materials carefully, but didn't scrimp where it made sense to spend. Since redwood has become astronomically expensive (and the original was shot), we went with fir to replace the post and screening. The area never really sees water and we can weatherproof with the right coatings and caulk to the degree we need to. But knowing the lock and knob take a lot of wear/tear, we opted for commercial-grade knob and deadbolt. We also properly mounted the post to the slab with a concrete anchor and post bracket that keeps the post off of the ground for weather resistance and structure.
The original door was an 84in door which is much harder to find and/or is special order and more expensive than a standard 80in door. We had two options: (1) Order a more expensive door to match the already shaky structure or (2) buy a more common 80in door and use the savings to rebuild the structure lowering the adjacent screen by 3-4 inches. We chose the latter and I don't think you'll be able to tell from the original and the finished product will be much stronger.
The end of day one found us finishing out the structure. The door shop was late in getting back to us and they goofed a bit of the matching which set us back a bit, but by dusk, the new structure was in; the door replaced and fit; the knobs and locks installed; strike-plates mortised; and everything was locked up tight.
We'll finish painting and re-structuring in the next few days and we'll post final photos soon.