One of the small projects I've done in our current home that's made me the happiest is a simple door replacement. When we moved in here, my study had a solid, unpainted wood door (no different than any other room in the apartment). We did a bit of work on doors throughout the place -- painting some, replacing hardware in others -- but never got around to working on the one to the study. (I also never thought to take a good picture of the doorway, hence the bad one here.) And because the room houses enough computers to make heat generation an issue, that door remained closed for most of the air-conditioned summer here in Boston. As a result, we lost out on all the nice light that comes in from the southern-exposure windows in the study, and the hallway stayed pretty cave-like as a result. Shannon and I finally decided that a French door might be in order.

After taking some measurements and learning that the study doorway was both nonstandard and a bit off-square, I headed down to Home Depot to find a simple, unpainted French door that I'd be able to saw down to the correct size. After bringing it home (bungie cords and a roof rack are your friend!), a friend helped me run it over the table saw, and then I used the old door to mark out the locations for the hinge leaves along the jamb of the new one. The wood of the new door was pretty soft, so I had to exercise caution in chiseling out the spots for the hinges, but after attaching them, I was able to hang the door into the frame and check for any spots that I'd have to trim further (none, thankfully!). Finally, I took the door back down and used a hole saw to drill out the spot for the doorknob set, and that was that.

One thing that made me incredibly happy was that the new door came with all the windows pre-wrapped in plastic (you can see the haze over the windows in the unpainted picture), meaning that I was then able to get to priming and painting it without having to tape anything off. (That's a lot of windows to have to tape!) Because of work and whatnot, it took me two days to finish off the painting -- but I love the result, both for how the door looks and the amount of light it lets into our hallway during the times of year that the study has to remain air-conditioned. It's enough that I wish I had replaced the door next to it (leading into the living room) at the same time, but that'll be a job for the next people who live here!