Gaping Hole in My House 2008

When Todd and I bought this house, we knew that the front doors needed to be replaced. They were drafty, and we expected that the one at the very front of the house, at the bottom of the stairs, would likely fall into the house with a stiff wind. Being the do-it-yourselfers that we are we decided to take on this project by ourselves.

The first front door, the smaller of the two, went in without too much hassle—that is until we got to the expanding foam portion of the install. Todd sprayed the foam, which resembles puffy Easy Cheese, into the gap around the door and we watched it expand. And expand, and then expand some more. It oozed out of the gap, and began to drip onto the floor. I mopped at it with a fistful of paper towels, and before I knew it my hands were coated in spray foam.

We finished the clean up, and I noticed that the spray foam dried on my hands. “No matter, I thought to myself, it’ll come off in the shower.” Todd glanced at the can of spray foam and noticed the giant letters at the very top of the can that said something to the effect of “Wear gloves when you use this stuff, or else the spray foam residue will be stuck to your hands for a week and will be excruciatingly painful to try to peel off and will even make your knuckles bleed in spots from when you were overzealous and tried to pick the stuff off square millimeter by square millimeter.”

We learned a valuable lesson with the spray expanding foam. I even went out and bought another can of it, with an air of arrogance. I left it on the floor of the passenger seat of my car for the installation of the larger front door. Last week, Todd had been driving the Jeep to work so that he could take the dogs in with him. One day he was pulling into work, and Griffen—who completely lacks in impulse control—got excited and jumped from the back and into the front seat in anticipation of spending the day in Todd's office and getting pet by Todd's co-workers. In his excitement, he kicked the cover to my armrest compartment, which has been broken for more than a year now, and it fell onto the floor of the passenger side of the car. The very sharp screw, that is still on the armrest cover, lined up in precisely the right angle and punctured the can of expanding spray foam that was waiting on the floor mat.

Expanding foam sprayed out of the can and all over the car. It sprayed, and expanded. Sprayed and expanded. Then sprayed and expanded some more. He pulled into the parking lot at work, and frantically threw the can out of the car and scooped expanding foam out with his hands until the car was clean. He began to attract a crowd of laughing co-workers as he scooped and scooped foam that was expanding as he tried to clean it up. Without gloves on, of course.

At any rate, here are some snaps of the construction.

I like to call this one "Gaping Hole in My House, 2008."

This is the first door we installed.

This is the big front door. It weighs roughly 4,973,452 pounds, and we lifted it approximately 573 times over the course of the installation.

This is the front door from the outside. We're debating on whether to paint it black, to match the garage doors. What do you think, Internet?

And this is my impossibly handy, MacGuyer-esque husband standing in the lawn admiring our hard work.