There are two story paths
The Patio Door Story
The Front Door Story
Bill, Not The Evil Bill
My disaster with Renewal By Andersen
Other Very Interesting Sites
Bahama Travel Warnings
Retoration Book Promotion Site for Jacobs 2 1982 Restoration
Original Small Low Bandwidth Restoration site
World Famous Instrument Makers(my sister)
My old Home City Site
This is simply my story
From April 2023: finally all complete
I find it is easier to give reviews if there is a story to be told with pictures. Since I have done web sites off and on for 35 years, I have some domains. In particular, I have domains for the area of the country I have lived like inmadcity.com(Madison WI) and inbeantown.org(Boston MA).
After 5 hours of meeting with she, who shall not be named, I had what I thought would be an expensive, but well executed plan to improve lighting in my home and bring my woods more into the home. I thought I would have two doors which were cherry wood on the inside. None of this is made up and everything I am recalling is very close to everything I heard or was given as an offer.
When the patio door was such a disaster, wait for it, I went to read my contract. Now I was a computer scientist and for 6 years I worked for a computer manuifacturer in both a marketing and an engineering role. During that 6 years I executed all of the software and hardware contracts for hardware and software we included in and on our computers. So I am not a total contract novice. The amount of legaleese in their contract is incredible. In pretty unavoidable language it says, that if you bring in a lawyer, whatever you owe will automatically be owed at once. Wow! It was difficult to find product things amongst all the legal pages.
In The beginning
- TOP: The 1999 front door was in rough shape both in the location one would place closing softeners, like the lower abandoned mount, but also in the materials used in the surround.
- MIDDLE: On the inside, even with side lights, it was quite dark for the space just off my office.
- BOTTOM: The french door was warped but holding it's own, but the center width of wood caught my eyes more than my woods. This was largely due to the amount of wood in the frame coming together where the doors joined.
- In reference I spent 27 years here, the attached link, and I like window walls (Frank Loyd Wright's Solarhemicyclo, which I restored and that is another story).
The back of the house
The plan was to open up the back to the largest door which would fit in the wall to bring my woods into focus instead of the large wooden divide where the french doors met. Besides it had taken me a year to seal up the warped doors without shrink wrap.
The front of the house
In front, the plan was to allow as much light as possible due to the dark nature of the space I constantly traversed between my kitchen, living room, and office
Door interior presentations
I thought very clearly about coloring of these doors because if one stands in the dining room, both doors are in sight as I will show you later. This is because the front
door area is in view because the open colonial staircase borders the dining room on east side and a 6' opening to the eatin kitchen borders the dining room to the south. This is why I wanted both doors a matching cheery wood.
The amount of oak flooring throughout had me decide on real cherry interiors for both doors. The outside of the deck door would be clad in vinynl and the outside
of the new front door would be a brown I selected. I also requested a new New England surround, which I was told was no problem.
So we commit
After working through all of this, and it took 5 hours, all I had to do was commit something around $37,000 at 4.99% over 15 years for about $315/month. The front door was not even being made by Anderson, but by an Amish company. That company had very good reviews. So the questions is why did I agree to such an expense. Having done substantial work on another house I wanted to avoid the finger pointing between supplied product and installation when problems came up. Boy was that a very expensive mistake!
Read Patio Door Story First, because I truly felt when I was past that, I was home free. Boy was I wrong.
Hopefully, by now you have read my adventures with my new expanded patio door. You hopefull read all the bumps along the way. It still awaits finishing due to possible permit issues not related to Renewal by Anderson except I may have to rip out the sections of ceiling I did not expect them to fix. Anyways, I figured my issues were over and I woulod be home free. This was a two day install made a bit longer as you will see as we go through the link via picture to the front door story.
