We are going to rent out our house when we move to Bangladesh, and now that we have refinished the floors, we are moving on to the next item on the we-should-probably-fix-that list: a new front door and storm door.
Our current front door is crap. It serves to close the opening in the front of our house and that’s about it. It’s so drafty, last winter I sealed it off with that plastic stuff you put around windows with double sided tape and told Nate we were only using the back door until spring. Also there’s a huge glass panel on the top half of the door that’s begging to be punched through.
So I did what I usually do when we need to fix something around the house: I turned to Angie’s List. Yesterday morning a contractor came over to provide a quote for replacing the front door and installing a new storm door. I should have known it would be bad when they offer $250 off per door to Angie’s List customers.
Even so, I was not prepared. The poor salesman quoted over $4,000 for our main entry door and storm door.
Yes, that is a comma, not a decimal point. And I picked out the absolute cheapest doors they had!
It cost less than half that to refinish all our wood floors. We could purchase a used, trusty SUV in Dhaka for $4,000, or go on another trip to Vietnam. We could re-do part of our kitchen, or fix up the deck and install hardwood floors in the sunroom. There are so many other things I’d rather spend $4,000 on.
Why on god’s green earth would we spend that much money on a fucking door? Especially when we’re moving in 8 months?
If I’m going to spend $4,000 on a door, that thing had better be able to sing, dance, and make me a sandwich.
Needless to say, our next course of action is to check out the door installation services at Home Depot. As much as the salesman derided the quality of Home Depot doors, they can’t be that bad.
I own several rentals and even without any special discounts I could replace both for well under $1k. I’ve found HD and Lowes contractors to have a pretty healthy markup, and granted I’m in Texas where things are cheaper, but you should still be able to get out for a fraction of that original quote.