How to Upgrade to a Glass Front Door

One of the reasons we purchased our house was the natural light throughout the home, however, there was one especially dark spot that always felt out of step with the way the rest of the house felt, and that was our front hallway. Thanks to a lack of windows, the front hallway was always significantly darker than every other space, so after failing to find a place to add a window, I set my sights on updating our front door to a door with much more glass.

This post includes product gifted by the Simpson Door Company. All content, ideas, and words are my own. Thank you for supporting the brands that allow us to create helpful content while featuring products we use and love!

Our original door was splintering at the bottom and had a small amount of glass on top, which let in very little light. I discovered Simpson Door Company and became enamoured with all their door options. Narrowing it down to a 3/4 lite door, which would allow for a lot more light into the front hallway, I looked to the style of our existing windows to drive the glass style. After much research into what style was most appropriate for an 80+ year old Colonial, we landed on the 7512 Thermal Sash. Working with the Simpson Door Company, we were able to customize the size of the door, for a perfect fit.

The before and after of this door is so good:

And from the exterior:

The Simpson Door Company generally sells slab doors, meaning that they are intended to be installed into either existing door jambs or jambs that are built for the door. They also have great filters on their site that can allow you to narrow down by the amount of glass, panels, and the style of your house to hone in on the perfect door. This made the process so much easier because there are so many different styles of doors.

Since we knew we were going to be painting the door, we had the door pre-primed, to minimize the effort on our side. Installing the door took some time, but was very straightforward. We had hoped to reuse the original door jamb, but as soon as we removed the original door, we saw that the jamb was splitting, so we removed the original casing too. The steps we took to install the door are as follows:

1. Removed the original door
2. Removed the original casing
3. Used this exterior door jamb kit and cut it to size
4. Routed and chiseled the door jamb for hinges, where this template is very helpful
5. Installed the door jamb
6. Painted the door jamb
7. Routed and chiseled the door for hinges
8. Made a hole in the door for the lockset
9. Installed weatherstripping on the bottom of the door
10. Painted the door using Sherwin Williams Emerald Urethane Enamel Paint
11. Installed the door and door hardware
12. Installed new casing on the interior

And that was it! The transformation is absolutely incredible, where our new Simpson Door Company door looks so much larger than our original door and lets so much more light into the space. We love how solid the door feels and it completely elevated the exterior of our house.

And some details:

• The exterior of the door is painted in Sherwin Williams Emerald in Satin, colourmatched to Farrow & Ball Parma Gray
• The interior of the door is painted Sherwin Williams Emerald in High Gloss, colourmatched to Farrow & Ball Lichen
• The lockset is Emtek Wilshire Entry Lockset in Unlacquered Brass with Egg Knobs
• The hinges are Emtek Unlacquered Brass Heavy Duty Hinges with Ball Ends
• The exterior of the house is painted Benjamin Moore, White Dove
• The exterior lights are Mark D. Sikes Lake Country Lanterns by Troy Lighting

What do you think?