Dare to Door

When we bought our house, we couldn't afford much, thanks to the THRIVING Seattle housing market. We bought based on location and potential. I'm pretty picky about decor, so I really don't want to pay for decor twice - once for when it was done originally, and once for us to re-do it. We bought a house that needed some fixing up, but was priced for it, rather than a house that was priced as a nice house, but was still going to need to be "fixed" for my tastes. It is a 1960 modest little house that is slowly being remodeled room by room....by two people who have no idea how to do home re-modeling. Learning comes with frugality.

Our challenge is that this isn't our "forever" house. We want to put things in it that are nice, are value-add to the over-all new style, but are also modest. We don't want to fill it up with the top end of anything, not when a middle-ground product will look just as nice and work just a well. We aren't going to the bottom, but trying to pick a middle ground. I've read so many articles about how expensive re-modeling is, and I'm daring to prove them wrong.

This weekend we are putting in a new front door - we just brought it home from Home Depot. The front door market is a bit depressing. There are a few basic doors that they order in quantity that are a reasonable price. Any other door (even if it's no more fancy or complicated), must be custom ordered and are at least twice the price. We picked one out that was in stock, but a little fancy. It has a window at the top with leaded glass in a nice, traditional but not too froofy, design. So, not a plain six panel door, but not custom ordered. End result? $249.

This choice was a little bitter sweet. We were glad to not pay $500 for the door we really loved(different design in the window), but a little bummed because the glass design is really not one that we preferred. It's a little more wavy (I'd prefer geometric straight lines) than we'd really like. However, it's not BAD...just a hint of traditional. It doesn't 100% match our house's style (pretty modern), but oh well. We were not going to pay $500 for a door. It's a door. No one will think this door is bad, in fact, I bet most will like it. We decided we'd rather save a couple hundred dollars than LOVE our door, and I'm glad we made that choice.

If we valued the LOVE of all items in our home more than we valued frugality and middle-ground purchases, then I wouldn't be able to remodel our home at all. Besides, I'm saving my "I don't care what it costs, I have to have THAT one!" card for the refrigerator when we re-do the kitchen. I will happily compromise on every other purchase.

And now... off to learn how to install a new front door.