If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you may recall we have had significant issues with the front door. Viz the complete inability of three separate incarnations to prevent water and wind coming in. Well finally we feel we may have reached the end of this particular road. It was with regret that we concluded that the wooden door which had been glazed with coloured and etched glass double glazed units especially purchased from New Milton Glass had reached the point of no return.

To be more accurate it often reached the point of not opening, that point being the bottom left corner which stuck at times of great stress. Or just when it had been raining. Trouble is that if you shave just a little bit more off, it leaves just a little bit more of a gap to encourage the ingress of water. Which in turn leads to greater swelling of the wood. Which in turn leads to … oh fill it in yourself, I’m sure you get the gist!

So we had to make sure that we would not have a repetition and would finally close the chapter (and door) on any inclement weather joining us inside. The only other requirements were that it close when we shut it and open when we turned the handle. Not a lot to ask we thought. Our best option as we saw it was to contact our old friends at Capital Windows and see whether they could do us a door to meet our less than rigorous specifications.

We had accepted the concept that we would end up with a ‘plastic’ door, but since we already have ‘plastic’ windows, we told ourselves it wouldn’t be so bad. Pleasant surprise on visiting Capital Windows. Plastic doors have advanced somewhat and have morphed into something called the ‘composite’ door. I’ll be honest, I have no idea what a composite door is composed of, but the chaps at Capital were very excited about how good it is and offered a guarantee to match their excitement. So we opened some doors which led to, well actually they opened onto walls. Not very Narnia, but I suppose there’s only so many doors you can put in a wall before you don’t have any wall any more.

We tried the different display doors with different handles and catches, looked at the double glazed patterned windows and decided on the wood effect closest to the last wooden door we had. In due time the fitters turned up with new door, complete with all fastenings, door knocker and letterbox already attached. Removed old door and old door-frame, replaced them with new door and door-frame within one afternoon. Even took the etched and coloured glass out of the old door so we could store it in the garage ‘just in case’. And exited stage left.

Should have known better. Wife was resting at time of departure and so didn’t try key in lock. Regrettably only after she surfaced did we find that her Fibromyalgia had a different set of criteria for how much strength was required to render the door open-able. Of course this was early Friday evening by then so we had to wait until the next week to contact Capital. Unusually they had to make two trips to make sufficient adjustment to allow Wife the freedom to come and go as she pleased, but to their credit they stuck with it and all seems to be well now.

There’s a small part of my mind that is expecting this to not be the end of the saga, but it’s not based on anything other than paranoia on my side. Well paranoia and three less than weather proof doors at any rate.

You may just possibly note a more than passing obsession with water and roofs. Well my fervent desire is that such issues are all well behind us now. The sterling chaps from Capital Windows in New Milton fetched up with (almost) all the required bits and pieces and soon dismantled our leaking and unfit for purpose sunroom roof and replaced it with something more than a little reminiscent of Kew Gardens. It has a ridge with pointy things on an everything. Since then, try as it might, the weather has not managed to breach its polycarbonate and aluminium defences. Hurrah! The bits that were required yet absent? Well the CW conservatories have everything boxed in one way or another but if you have a 35 degree pitch to the roof and the manufacturer sends a 30 degree maximum widget to cover the aluminium structure, you have to get them to send the right one. No fuss, no drama, Capital Windows got it sorted. You may gather we are happy with their work, and you wouldn’t be wrong.

Slight downside is that we only got about a month out of it before it got too cold to use as a breakfast room. It soaks the sun up beautifully in the morning, but regretfully there has not been an enormous amount of that around more recently. We are therefore faced with several alternatives given the current economic and eco-climate. Firstly we can just put more layers on and pretend it’s not November in Britain, but that requires a deeper reserve of denial than we can probably plumb. Secondly increase our contribution to that little bit of global warming that is Lymington, ignore financial constraints and run a heater sufficiently powerful enough to hold the cold at bay. Or not use it until it gets a tad warmer. Although the pull of the second option is strong, if I were a betting man, the last option would be what I put my money on.

That would also mean that we don’t get to see the hedgehog eat whatever it is he is finding on the lawn just before we retire for the night. It had become our refuge from the day and a perfect place to wind down before going to bed, and the hedgehog bumbling around outside the back of the sunroom was just an added bonus. I imagine that he, well they actually as there are two of them, will be seeking somewhere warm to see out the rest of the winter oblivious of the world around them. Ever get the feeling we have missed a trick as a species?

So at last a new front door! Front door man arrived just after the initial frost had disappeared from the back window of the car, which was handy as I had to back the car paste his van. With the sun shining what could possibly go wrong. Well nothing so far actually. But did I mention the teensy little problem with the double glazed units being made for the door?

Well someone must have not been paying attention because the ball got dropped somewhere between us saying “Yes that’s definitely the door for us” in the door warehouse and the door being delivered to us. No actually the current episode started just before we chose the door so I must digress. Apparently it’s not so easy to get solid wood doors these days. You generally get solid wood door with a veneer on both sides which gives it a better finish. It may also enable not such good looking wood to be used as the meat in the sandwich, but since that would require removing the veneer I guess I’m never going to find out. After the last debacle of a door, we had decided we wanted a solid wood door, so we went with the deputy manager of the door warehouse to choose a solid wood door. Here’s a handy tip for you, deputy managers may not be able to tell a solid wood door from a veneered door, despite what you might expect, especially when the wood used is pretty much the same colour to the veneer. You live and learn.

pWhere was I? Oh yes, when the door was delivered, the builder mentioned there was a small problem with the glazing. What that small problem turned out to be was that you could see the black bits that you get on the edges of double-glazed units that are normally all hidden by the frames. This meant that either the glazing firm had messed up or the door warehouse had mistakenly said the doors were compatible with the units. At this point I could have cared less. All I had ever wanted was a front door which kept the outdoors outdoors and the indoors indoors. In my previous life in property maintenance I had learned there are two ways to make something disappear, you either hide it or make it look like it’s supposed to be there. I figured that I could probably do something clever to make the black edging look like a feature of the glazing so delivery was taken. The new new door is now fitted and the outside having been coated with three coats of quality exterior varnish, we await a wet southerly with baited breath.