Since the rest of the front of the house looked all clean and new with its fresh coat of paint, the old storm door really stood out with its dirty stained sheet metal and beat-up screen.  So after Jess painted the front door we replaced the storm door with a nice new black Pella ‘Fullview’ storm door.  It looks great and matches well, plus it actually seals so it should be much more energy efficient.  The only thing I don’t like about the door, is that the screen is extremely difficult to swap with the glass.

Despite having put one in before, and the excellent Pella instructions (which I apparntly forgot to blog about) installation did not go very smoothly.   The first problem was that the opening was about 3/8″ to small, so I had to cut the molding back on one side.   Easy enough except for the top and bottom, where the circular saw wouldn’t reach.  I managed to get that out with an old fashioned chisel.  Once I had the opening widened, I started installing, and then couldn’t find the bottom sweep for the door.  I searched and searched, and was about to give up and call Pella, assuming that they had forgotten it, when I noticed the handle kit was awfully large for just the door handle.  Turns out since the sweep is color matched to the handle it is in the handle kit.  Of course if I had acutaly read the instructions instead of just looking at the pictures, it would have told me that.  With those two hassles out of the way, the installation was a piece of cake.