Project House Update: Installing a Sliding Door

Remember when my effort to hang curtains sparked my desire to redo our master bathroom? Well, we finally started on it by replacing the sliding door in our bathroom!

Here's what it used to look like, the 'Before':

Choosing a door turned out to be an incredibly difficult process. Do you know how many options there are when it comes to doors? I really wanted french doors, but the opening is only six feet wide meant a two door french door would be very narrow and a single, center french door (you know, when it's just one window door with a surrounding windows) would be partially blocked by the counter. So, Dan won and we decided on another sliding door.

Then, there were still another million options, but I'll skip to the end. After three separate trips to Home Depot and sitting and weighing the options with their door salesmen, we decided on a 60 x 80 inch Andersen sliding glass door with privacy glass, white on the inside and dark bronze on the outside. Privacy glass so the freakin' ugly vertical blinds are gone!

And you know where this goes from here, right? The two engineers decide to install it on their own. Do you know how heavy and large a sliding glass door is? Once we ordered it, Dan started designing a jig to get home once the store got it in. Doesn't he look so proud that it got home in one piece?

And since I am useless when it comes to the heavy stuff (you should have seen me at Home Depot helping loading it onto the trailer. Oh lord...), Jimmy came over to help Dan install it.

First, they removed the old door...

...and painted the metal surround just in case you could possibly see it when the door was installed...

...and moving the new one into place...

...and shimmed it into the proper position

...framed out the exterior...

...and finally painted it. {Sidenote: when you buy Andersen windows from Home Depot, they can give you the color code of the window so you can match the paint for the trim.}

It's amazing how much more energy efficient this new window is. With the special sun film for Arizona, the afternoon sun no longer bakes the room.

There's still some work that needs to be done on the interior side of the door, but we don't want to finish framing it out until we've made more progress on the rest of the room. We plan on removing the bulkhead above the door, so we'll do a more permanent trim down the line. Right now, it's just a chamfered board, cut to length.

In total, one month to pick a door, another month to have it made, a full day to remove the old and install the new, a week to frame it out and paint it. It was so worth it, though. The difference is just amazing.

The only thing standing between us and just gutting this bathroom is finding our perfect vanities and we are on the hunt. Stay tuned...