The Little Dutch Door That Could

From the very first time we laid eyes on this door, we knew it was a keeper. It couldn’t stay in its original location because – as you know – we removed the wall between the kitchen and garage-turned-family-room, but there was no way we were getting rid of this little beauty! So we decided to make it an exterior door leading from our family room out to our side yard.

Perfect! How hard could it be to convert an interior door to an exterior one? No big deal, right? Wrong. I’ve said this more than once, but It’s always those “simple” little projects that surprise you and turn into total marriage testers (Kidding! But it was not our finest moment. 😉 ).

Besides the overall sanding, stripping and repainting, this sweet little Dutch beauty had to be weather-stripped and water-tested (there’s no overhang above the door, so we had to be sure it was watertight). We set to work adding weather-stripping to the doorframe, but didn’t realize we would also need to seal all the window panes and the split between the top and bottom halves of the door…until we tried the “hose test.” Despite our best weather-stripping efforts, she leaked like a sieve.

I’ll spare you the boring details, but after several trips to Home Depot and failed attempts at a solution (not to mention, lots of wet towels and soggy feelings), we found a small rubber seal, carpet tacks, and a good caulk line did the job.