A Great Way to Spend Your Tax Refund – A New Front Door!
Replacing your old, drab, drafty front door is a great way to spend your tax refund! And someone can typically have a beautiful new door installed and finished for anywhere between $2K – $4K, depending upon things like the amount of glass in/around the door, the type of finish, and the complexity of the installation. There are a number of benefits that a new door provides, some of which a homeowner may never have thought of, including:
- Aesthetics: I’m amazed again and again at how beautiful a new front entry door can be. The right style and color door can literally transform the entire look of your home! We often liken it to wheels on a car. Nice wheels can make the whole car look great. A stunning new door also contributes to the good feelings generated by pride in ownership. It feels good to enjoy your home and how it looks. It’s also a great way to welcome guests. When someone walks to and through an attractive, sturdy, newly finished door it sets the tone for the entire home.
- ROI (Return on Investment): When it comes to the value of a home, curb appeal is a huge factor! That first impression someone has when they pull up to a home is significant in determining value. It’s not unreasonable at all to imagine that an investment of $2K – $4K could be returned instantly. In fact, Remodeling Magazine’s January 2016 “Cost vs. Value” issue projects that nationally a new fiberglass front entry door, installed at a cost of $2,574, will provide an ROI of 82.3%. That’s a great investment!
- Energy Efficiency: Entry doors are notorious for their lack of energy efficiency. Steel doors, for example are often cold or hot to the touch, depending upon the weather outside, because they so easily transmit heat and cold. New fiberglass doors are filled with foam insulation so there is significantly less heat/cold transmission. Over time entry doors, particularly heavily used doors, tend to develop cracks in the insulation around the frame because the frame shifts over time. The weather strips around most doors and at the sill become worn out over time and lose their compression. It’s not uncommon to see small gaps of light around entry doors. The advances in glass technology over the last 20 years also means that new doors with glass are substantially more energy efficient than their older counterparts. Simply put, a new door lowers heating/cooling bills!
- Security: It’s not uncommon for us to replace an entry door that simply has a single-knob lock. Breaking into a lock like this is easy for even the most novice of thieves. So almost always we’ll install a new deadbolt lock. On some jobs we’ll even install new multi-point locks that add an even greater level of security. Deadbolts and multi-point locks make things much more difficult for a would-be thief. We also always recommend to our clients that we install a door with a solid LVL frame on the latch side which makes the door nearly impossible to “kick in.” Finally, older doors are often installed in such a way that they can simply be pried away from the frame, rendering the lock useless. We always install our doors using a system of shims that prevent the door from being pried away from the frame in this manner.
- Water-Tight seal: Older (and even some newer) entry doors are prone to leaking. When we remove existing doors we regularly find rot around the frame and particularly under the sill. The primary causes of this include shoddy installation practices and/or the fact that most doors have a wooden frame. Doors are difficult to install properly. Everyone wants them to operate with ease and yet be completely weather-tight. Too often we find doors improperly installed and over time these deficiencies lead to leaks that create expensive repairs at the time of replacement. A new door, installed properly, will not leak. Also, on almost all of the doors we install we use a composite frame and sill base. It’s a simple fact, doors take a beating from Mother Nature and wooden door frames and sills rot out quickly. When installing a new door, make sure to hire a reputable contractor who knows what they’re doing and make sure the door they are installing has a composite frame and sill base.
To wrap it all up, installing a new front entry door is not only a smart, fiscally responsible investment, it is something that any homeowner and their neighbors and guests will enjoy for years to come!
