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Cutting in the first door

Until now, our front door has been a piece of OSB screwed in with eight deck screws, and our doorknob a battery drill with a T-25 bit. (Yes, we kept the T-25 in the keybox in case we forgot to bring one up.)

Today, we pulled off the blocking studs and put in our first door:


Things we learned:

  • We put the sealant on the house, estimating how far from the edge. Turns out we forgot to account for the 1/2" of gap between the door and the rough opening, so the sealant was all too far away from the actual door trim. We had to pull the door down and add another bead.
  • We should have put another strip of sill flashing in, along with a tapered shim, so that water leaking through the door's premade aluminum sill would definitely come out the front of the house. How could water leak through aluminum? For reasons unclear, this door's sill is two pieces that hinge together.
  • We plumbed the hinge side, then realized the door was an uncorrectable parallelogram. We had to undo than, then level the sill first, then plumb the hinge side, then shim the jamb side to be flat.
  • We looked all over the cabin for the deadbolt. I mean, there was the one box sitting there, but I knew that box had the one-sided (no key) deadbolt for the other door, so really no point in getting that out of the box. That's why there's tape over the hole. When we got home to Seattle, we found the one-sided deadbolt in a different box.
Ah well. Our new motto: "practice house."

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