A key change we’re looking to make with our entry way addition is to make the front door more of a focal point on the front of the house so that it’s less easily overlooked by visitors.

The plans we initially discussed with the architect involved refinishing and reusing the same front door we have today, but adding a couple of large windows on each side to act as sidelights so that it would be closer to the right scale for the house.  We really liked this idea because it allowed us to re-use the door we have now, which is in really good shape and didn’t require us to try to find a new front door that matched the doors and woodwork in the rest of the house.

Here’s a picture of our current front door:

The Front Door

The door we have now is, however, a little smaller than your typical front door … and it’s a 15-pane glass door, which is a bit of an unusual choice for a front door.  When we started talking to the contractor about the plans for the front door, he also expressed a concern about being able to find windows of the appropriate scale and with the right moldings that could be pieced together with our door to look right as sidelights.

Given these concerns, we’ve started thinking about other options for the front door besides reusing the one we have now.  Right now, our thought is that we could maybe re-use the front door as an interior door between the new entry way and the basement stairs / kitchen and add a new front door with sidelights that looks similar to our back door (which, since the house was built to face the other direction, would have been the original front door).

The back door is a six panel wood door with sidelights.  Here’s a picture:

The Back Door

To get an idea of what’s available that might be similar to the back door, we looked online a bit and then went to the Pella showroom over the weekend.  We were initially undecided between a fiberglass door and a wood door since the low-maintenance aspect of the fiberglass door was appealing, but we were concerned that we would need to go with a real wood door to get the right look.  After seeing the fiberglass doors and the showroom, we were pretty much decided that we’d be happier with the real wood door.  Even with the faux wood grain and stained in a color similar to the rest of our woodwork, the fiberglass door still felt a lot lighter weight and looked so different from all of the rest of the doors in our house that we thought it would never look quite right.  The wood doors, however, were beautiful.

The door we thought would be the best match for what we currently have is a six-panel mahogany door.  Here’s a picture from the Pella website:

New Six-Panel Mahogany Door

The sidelights are a little different since they’re only one pane wide … the ones in the back of our house are two panes wide.  And the moulding around the panels is a little different, but I think (given that they won’t be right next to each other) it has the right look to blend in with the style of the rest of the doors and trim in the house.  I’m really glad we were able to find a door that we think will work!

So, I guess right now we’re kind of liking the idea of putting in a new door (that seals right and has real sidelights rather than windows, etc.).  Now we’re just waiting to see what the contractor comes back with for estimates – I’m really excited to get started on the project!

Filed Under: Home Improvement

Tags: ,

Leave a Reply