Knockety Doors supplied the door for this project. As always, all opinions are my own.
I’ll be completely honest – going into this project was more than a little intimidating. I have wanted to replace our front door for a while, but it’s felt so intimidating so I’ve been putting it off. Finally, I decided to just bite the bullet and do it and I’m so happy I did. The installation (while still a little nerve wracking) ended up being so much more simple than I expected and I’m in love with the new door!
I started by designing my own custom door through Knockety. Their doors are completely customizable from the wood tone to the glass type, and they’re super high quality and made in the US. I chose a 9 lite solid Mahogony door in Winter White with Flemish Glass. I’m obsessed with the character the Flemish Glass gives!
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Installation
I decided to choose a slab door instead of a pre-hung door because I wasn’t interested in fully ripping out the door jam, I just wanted to swap the actual door. I am not actually sure how much work I saved, though. While with a pre-hung door you do have to remove trim work and pull out the old jam, there isn’t anything you have to do to adjust the door. Since I ordered a slab door, I had to make it look exactly like my old door in order to fit in the opening. This meant shaving about an inch off the bottom and a little off one side, then using a router to carve out spots for the hinges to go. I definitely think that there pros and cons to both ways and there isn’t a “right” answer, but I think it’s good to be aware that Knockety offers both options.
I started by taking off the old door… in the middle of December. Smart move, Mercedes (actually, it was fine. The installation went pretty quick and we covered the opening with a sheet while we worked).
For some reason, the opening to our home is 1” shorter than standard, so I trimmed 1” off the bottom of the door. Note : this is doable with solid wood doors, but trickier with fiberglass doors. I measured the height of the old door on the handle side and the hinge side and they were about 1/8” different, so I made sure to include the exact measurements when cutting the new door so it fit perfectly. I traced the line I needed to cut and used a scrap board to score a line on both sides with a utility knife so I wouldn’t have any tear out.
Then I grabbed my circular saw, clamped on that scrap wood as a straight edge, and cut!
After that was finished, I did the same thing on the side to mirror the exact shape of the old door. It was terrifying but also totally fine in the end – nothing to be afraid of.
The final piece of modification that the new door needed was making space for the new hinges. I laid the old door on top of the new door and traced exactly where the new hinges needed to go. I highly recommend watching a few YouTube videos of professionals doing this. It was super helpful. It is important to get the vertical and horizontal placement just right so that the hinges work like they should.
I used a router that I borrowed from a neighbor and it was so much fun to use – I think I need to add one to my own tool collection. I didn’t use a hinge template, but I wish I would have because it would have made it a little cleaner, not that you really see the hinges anyway.
After we installed the hinges, we hung the new door and installed the handle and deadbolt (and later we added the weather stripping back on because we forgot to do that before hanging it the first time). I was so pleseantly surprised – and relieved – that we actually did it! The door fit perfectly.
Review
Our old door had definitely seen better days. It had been painted at some point, but the job was far from perfect and brush strokes were visible everywhere. I gave it a fresh coat a few years ago, but the original flaws were still there. I considered stripping the paint entirely, but with no windows on the front of our house – just a quirky fake one on the porch – there was no natural light coming in from that side. Plus, how could the kids watch the trash truck go by without a window?!
After weighing my options, replacing the door and donating the old one was the best choice. Knockety made the entire process so easy, and their customer service team was a dream to work with from start to finish. I love that you can totally customize your door to get exactly what you want. I couldn’t be happier with the new door and it has truly transformed our home’s curb appeal, giving it the fresh look we were hoping for.
Changing the door changed so much about our front entry and I love it so much now!
With love,
Mercedes 🖤
With Love, Mercedes 
It’s beautiful!!!
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