After 10 Years – Goodbye Old and Hello New

If you have been reading my blog for years, then you may have seen the old sliders in many of my blog post photos, both on the interior and exterior of my house.

When I take photos of the rooms where the doors are I have always tried not to get the doors in my photos since they were showing their 52 years – rotting wood, fogged and pitted glass, no longer slid easily and not airtight, but worst of all from a decorating viewpoint, the interior sliding black screens were on the interior.

Having black screens in a house isn’t bad thing, but when you like white decor, the black screens in my mind stuck out like a sore thumb.

Back in November the doors were supposed to be installed, but the contractors found out after taking the old living room slider out that the new doors were too short.

They temporarily put it in and closed up the top with wood. It stayed like this over the holidays and last week they were back with the right size doors and installed them on two very cold days.

With the large openings open to the outside for a few hours, I just bundled up in the house to stay warm while they installed the 3 doors – living room, kitchen and studioffice/multi-purpose room.

What The Doors First Looked Like

When we first moved into the house 10 years ago, the original doors were stained wood with a black sliding screen door on the inside. The three sliders on the second floor of the house are different from the first floor and have the screens on the outside, so I knew it was possible for sliders to have outside screens.

Soon after we moved into the house, I painted all the doors white…

…but the black screen doors were still in place. After painting the doors I ordered white ones from Home Depot. After a few weeks I got an email saying they no longer had any and canceled the order. I was never able to find white ones that fit, so I lived with the black. We like to have the doors open to the lake breezes when the weather is nice so we needed them.

The color of the exterior trim on the house and doors used to be teal.

About 7 years ago we had the exterior painted in a paint color called Khaki Bronze. Since then the doors have stayed that way until last week.

The Search for New Sliding Glass Doors

This is not a sponsored post. Back in the fall, Ed and I knew we had to get serious about getting the doors replaced. I mentioned to Ed that we bought the house because of the exceptional lake view. With the glass so pitted and fogged it was ruining the view.

After contacting four window and door companies and getting their quotes, Ed and I were shocked at how much getting the three sliding doors was going to cost.

I was also a bit upset that only the most expensive company would be able to do white inside and the tan khaki color on the exterior. I didn’t want white on the exterior as the color wouldn’t coordinate with the rest of the exterior.

I didn’t want to give up on my white on the “inside of the doors and khaki tan on the exterior vision” and did some more Googling. I found a local window and door showroom that sold ProVia doors. I hadn’t heard of them before. It is an Amish owned company in Ohio.

I called the showroom and set up a time to go to see the doors. After seeing the doors in person and asking the owner tons of questions and found out we could get white on the interior and a color called Desert that matched the exterior of the house we were sold.

Oh and they were the least expensive. We also were sold on the fact that the doors were made by skilled Amish, so we knew they would be good.

The New Sliding Glass Doors

It is very hard to take a photo into the sun and this side of my house gets the bright sun all day long so I did my best. This is the kitchen door. It slides open so easily now with only one hand. I needed two hands and all my strength to get the old ones open.

Here is the living room. I didn’t take a photo in the studioffice, but it looks just like these…. very nice… white on the inside, weathertight and the super clear glass is made especially for southern homes to cut glare and keep the hot sun from penetrating the glass.

What I am most happy to see with the new doors is that the exterior color matches the exterior paint color and the sliding screen panel is now on the outside. You can hardly even see the screen doors. :-)

And one other nice feature that I didn’t mention was that the old sliders could not be opened from the outside when they were locked. Now we can lock the doors and open them with a key from both outside and inside.

So from now on I will no longer try to minimize the doors when taking photos for posts as there are no longer any black screens messing with the rooms color balance and color scheme.

I am just so happy to say goodbye to the old rotting wood, not needing to use both hands to open the doors anymore, foggy and pitted glass and black screen doors.

Now I have to go buy a few gallons of glass cleaner as I have to clean the glass frequently so the view out to the lake is always crystal clear. I usually use Windex or Invisible Glass to clean them, but was wondering if you know of another brand of glass cleaner that cleans glass well or any glass cleaning tips that I may not know?