ladies and gentleman, the door.

Good news and bad news. The good news is the side sliding glass door is installed. I just need to figure out how I'm gonna trim the inside edges, but it's purely cosmetic, it's all sealed up. I'll probably try and do some kind of right-angled aluminum. More importantly,  let me be the first to say: low-E coated double pane glass is nothing short of amazing. It's currently 98° out; if you touch the glass outside, there's no question, it's hot to the touch. If you touch the glass on the inside, it's air-conditioned-room cool to the touch. There's probably a 20° difference between the inside and outside surface if not more. I suspect this will really help keep the room cool, and now I want to change out the kitchen window as well (this side of the house gets the most sun). I may also try and figure out what kind of door it is and look into different handle options. The one on it isn't bad, but if there's something sexier that's easy to swap, I may do that. Oh yes, and much unlike the old one, this slides like buttah.

The bad but not tragic news is that when they said to knock out six inches of stucco around the outside perimeters, they weren't kidding. Even though the outside mounting lip is only an inch or two, there's some kind of building code that says they have to. This meant that the install guys took off more on the side door, and told me to take off the six inches around the big opening in the back of the house (I hadn't removed anything because there wasn't a door to remove). This was more of the no fun disaster I went through yesteryday of sawing with circular saw and smashing with hammers. I probably sweated a gallon and managed to minorly blister the inside of thumb swinging hammers (even with work gloves), and I still need to remove a 2x4 from one side and rip it down a half inch because the installers told me the opening was a wee bit small. I also need to clean up the disaster of rubble caused by smashing out stucco in back. The installers plan to return either tomorrow or next week to install the back sliding door.

In related news, I'm probably gonna get some roller solar shades for both doors, spefically these. I hate vertical blinds, so I think this will be a little more visually pleasing. And these apparently have little chains, so they don't work like regular window shades.