Replacing our "Door to No Where"

Removing our Door to No Where

Since we had the back stairs removed from the house we have had a "door to no where". It has looked pretty funny to tell you the truth (as you can see on the left).

The door has been screwed into the frame so that no one could open it, but it has still looked a bit dubious, especially from the back yard.

We are replacing the back door with some floor to ceiling louvers. Louvers should give us a good airflow through the house and help to cool it down, especially with summer coming.Our New Back Louvers

We had considered getting timber louvers, same as the window next to it. After thinking about it we decided to go with tinted louvers. That would allow some more light to come into the stairwell, which is just next to the new louvers.

The screen behind the louvers is a security screen. We didn’t actually specify a security screen behind the louvers, but I was very relieved when I saw them put it in, especially after seeing the kids playing around the louvers. Jessica seems to like to throw her stuffed tiger on the louvers for a view of the back yard.

Stop Your Pocket Sliding Door from Scratching

Sliding Pockey Door Guides - Stop ScratchesWith most pocket sliding door that I have seen there are scratches on the inside and outside face of the door. These scratches are most often caused by the timber and other hardware that is inside the cavity that the pocket door actually slides into.

Our old upstairs bathroom door had this problem, and had some pretty unsightly scratches on the sliding door. Downstairs we have two pocket sliding doors, neither one of which I really desired to see scratched up as our old upstairs bathroom door was.

I found the solution at Bunnings in the sliding door hardware section for only about $4.50 per door.

As you can see in the photo above (click on it for a larger view) I purchased some sliding door guides to install on the door frame. The guides are just two small pieces of plastic designed to fit onto the bottom of the door frame. I had to trim the door guides a bit to get the perfect fit, but now the door can’t rock into the timber and door hardware that is inside the frame that the pocket door slides into.

I always like it when a cheap and easy solution comes up to fix a problem. I just wish they were all this easy …

We Are (Finally) Moved Downstairs!

After a lot of time, painting and hard work we are finally moved downstairs!

The final stage for this you would have though would have been finishing the internal staircase, but we still had a lot of painting and preparation to do before we could finally move down into the four new bedrooms, including painting the new staircase.

The kids are now moved into their bedrooms and we are moved into our master "retreat", as Tamara calls it. The new master bedroom feels huge, and it is so nice to finally have a wardrobe / closet, as well as the ensuite.

I’ll post some photos soon of the kids bedrooms, our master bedroom and the ensuite…