The very expensive miscommunication about doors

If I were a photographer, I think I’d be a photographer of doors. They are such a great metaphor. And New Mexico is a great place to admire doors. The front doors, in particular, have a lot of character. Some are turquoise, many are hand carved and imported from Mexico.

Others are done by local artisans, like this one, carved by a local real estate agent I’ve worked with.

Here’s the exterior door of the house we’re renting. It’s not hand carved, and I’ve seen this same door elsewhere in the neighborhood. But I still like it.

Here’s the front door of the house we tried to buy that ended up with septic issues:

Here’s from another house we looked at but didn’t buy;

Here’s more great local front doors:

But unfortunately here’s the exterior door of our house on the hill. Yeah…

At some point a few years ago a real estate agent convinced us to paint it red. Real estate agents like little bits of red to make things “pop”. It’s amusing to look through pictures of houses for sale that have been staged – they all have random spots of red. Red accent pillows, red bits here and there, scattered through the rooms. Anyway, it’s a terrible front door, with or without the red paint.

Wooden interior doors are also common here in these southwest style homes. Here’s the style of the basic ones in the house we’re renting;

Other interior doors are even more elaborate. We looked at this house twice, but decided not to buy it because it was too awkward inside, and had no views. It had character though! This is a beautiful door.

Our house currently has prefab hollow white doors that you see in every low-end apartment building across the US. I had trouble finding a picture of them, because who takes pictures of boring white doors? I think this photo was one of those accidental bumps of the shutter button.

When we first started the remodel, I wanted to install wooden interior doors. But then we thought we were moving to a different house, and it would be a rental. We were trying not to spend too much money, so I decided that our existing doors were good enough for a rental.

Then yesterday morning, John and I went out the house to check the remodel progress. And it looked like our doors had bred in the night and made duplicates of themselves.

There were white doors everywhere. John was like, “Here are our new doors.” And I was like, “New doors? What new doors?!?”  He said, “You wanted new doors.” And I said, “Why would I want new doors that look exactly like the old doors?!?”

I was so upset I was on floor crying. This has been such a difficult project. John was saying it’s only money.  But it’s over $2,000 we just wasted on doors. I couldn’t believe it. What a huge disappointment to spend that kind of money and not get anything for it.

I’d post a comparison picture of the old ones vs. new ones, but I can’t even tell the difference between the old doors and the new ones.

Here’s what I think happened. I was going over the plans with the contractor awhile back and I told him to not bother with getting new stained wood doors. I figured we’d make do with our existing doors in order to save money. I must have said that the “white is fine.” That “white matches the territorial style anyway.”

So he got new wood doors and painted them white.

It’s tragic! I’m trying to be ok with it, it’s just a couple grand. But such a bummer! I could have had new wood doors!