Kitchen Progress: New Door, Trim, and Threshold Tile

Yup, I’m still plugging away at the kitchen! I’m wrapping up trim, and then I’ll be able to do After shots of the whole room for you. But I wanted to dedicate a post to this kitchen door project because it’s been a lot of work and it made a big impact.

The door I’m talking about is the one seen in this old photo. It leads to our enclosed back porch, which we use as a mudroom.

There wasn’t anything wrong with the door, but it always bothered me that we had no visibility into our backyard from our kitchen/dining room. We put so much work into the space last year (see Backyard Patio, Painting, and Landscaping) – I wanted to be able to see it from inside!

Also, as you can see in this photo, there was SO MUCH natural light we were missing out on. This wall faces east. I’d come downstairs in the morning and the sun would be streaming through this little pet door. (The pet door just lets our cat into the mudroom – not outside.)

Home Depot and Lowe’s have affordable half-lite glass doors, but everything available off-the-shelf has a grid over the glass, like this one. I had to do a custom order for plain glass without a grille. Spending more money to get something simpler is my M.O., it seems.

I went with a Jeld-Wen Smooth-Pro Fiberglass Exterior Door from Home Depot. It cost $475. It could have been cheaper if I had been patient enough to wait for a sale (which I usually am!), but with a 4-8 week lead time, I just wanted to get the ball rolling.

Here’s the newly-installed door, with Lola checking out his newly-installed cat door.

I switched the way the door swings: it was a right-hand inswing and now it’s a left-hand inswing. I referenced this Home Depot door handing guide a million times to make sure I ordered the correct one.

This left-hand inswing flows better with our mudroom’s exterior door (which is also a left-hand inswing), and it feels like a more natural path to our kitchen. Since switching the inswing made for a more complicated installation, I chose to hire a handyman to install it. That cost $295. Not cheap, but worth it to me. Thankfully, the rest of this project was DIY and affordable!

I tore off the trim and replaced it, which is what I’ve been doing to all the entryways on the first floor.

And then I tackled Baby’s First Tile Job. This glossy beige tile was not adding anything good to the space.

It took fewer than 5 minutes to demo.

Removing the tile revealed a couple of divots (like you see below) in the old concrete threshold. I patched those with Quikrete.

I used EliteTile Retro Glazed Porcelain Hex Mosaic in Matte White. When I bought this tile for our half-bathroom (see Half-Bathroom Before and After), I ordered enough with this project in mind. I don’t have a wet saw, so I cut the tiles by hand using tile nippers. It wasn’t the most enjoyable 2 hours of my life, but it was far from the worst (here’s looking at you, La La Land).

The cut tile edge was pretty rough; sanding smoothed them out.

Finally, it was time to lay tile. I won’t go into process details because there are tons of how-to guides available online. Here’s the tile after I adhered it, before I grouted it. I used a Schluter metal tile edging trim for the exposed edge.

Here’s the tile after I grouted it, when I was in the “I’ve made a huge mistake” phase. I had no idea what I was doing!

I just kept sponging and sponging until I made it through.

Lola may not be impressed, but I am super happy with how my first tile job turned out.

So, now, back to the Before:

And the After:

The first day we had the new door installed, Jarrod and I were admiring the view and we saw our very first goldfinch in our backyard. There had surely been others, but we had never seen them because we couldn’t see the yard. Now we see them all the time back there!

Upcoming posts: full kitchen makeover, and our awful mudroom which isn’t so awful anymore.