a shortcut.

as much as we love the new front door, the new one at the rear of the house may take the cake. the existing door was one of my least favorite things about the house. it was just an aluminum sliding door. and it was ugly. the back of the house also faces southwest, so it would let in a lot of hot afternoon sun. we put some old blackout curtains we had from james's old apartment up to help with both situations, though it didn't completely solve either. 

but besides being ugly, it was also nearly non-functional. the door itself had no real locking mechanism. just a few holes roughly drilled into the aluminum framing, which was difficult to actually lock. and even then, if you pulled hard enough, it would still pop open. so not only could it not be locked or unlocked from the outside, it was also just not safe. we never advertised this before, but now that it's gone, we can show you our janky security system for that door:

needless to say, it was a pain in the butt to get in and out of, so we mostly avoided it. which was also a bummer because the garage (or hangar, as we call it) is behind the house, and it would be so much easier to be able to enter/exit the house this way, than to go all the way around to the front door. but that's exactly what we did for over a year and a half! but now it has all been resolved, and it is pretty, and functional, and convenient, and we love it!

as you can see, even with the sidelight, it is still smaller than the old door, so we have a bit of exterior wall to patch up. while the knob is from emtek like the hardware on the front, the lock itself is a kwikset smartcode lock, which means one less key to carry around or fumble with! and we can also hook it up to vivint, our home security system, so that we could lock/unlock it remotely, which certainly has its benefits!