hi folks --
Looking for inspiration or feedback regarding the installation of a new wooden front door on a house that is regrettably aluminum-clad. The alu will be exiting within a few years, pending budget and some archaeology to discover what's under it (I believe wooden clapboard, typical for us here in the Northeast).

In the meantime, I need help figuring out how to trim the door on the exterior. This door opens onto my open front porch which has wooden floor and beadboard ceiling, but is aluminum clad.

The previous steel door had a metal screen door attached, and I will remove the aluminum flashing that held it in, leaving an open gap around the new door. How should I trim it out?

A photo to help visualize:


The placement of mailbox, housenumbers etc can always be changed. Thanks in advance for any tips, or even better, your own pictures of how wooden doors are trimmed on your bungalows.

I'd think about trimming it with 4" boards on the sides with a 6" board on the top extending about 1-2" past the side trim. This is basically how my interior is trimmed and is pretty common in craftsman style houses. You will probabably have to cut a rabet on the backside of the trim to fit over the siding. If you wanted something simpler you could just but the trim against the siding. You'd have to rip the trim to the correct width. How it would look will depend a lot on how even the ends of the siding are.

If I am looking at this right, it looks like the darkest piece of wood is the door jamb (the frame where the door is prehung)and there is a gap all the way around the door. If this is indeed the case, you need to install a door stop to close this gap, or you will get very cold in the winter. And it looks like the jamb is too shallow to even install the top on. That's why we had to order a front door "slab only"(which looks just like yours) without being prehung, and reutilize the existing door jamb. I guess like Greg said you can rabbet out some 1X's to make a stop-like surround and cut them so that they meet up with those Alu J-strips. It will be very tricky to do correctly.
Did a door installer do this work for you? What were his comments about the jamb thickness?
Carol

For the front door, we have a white aluminum screen door in front of the door, so I wasn't thinking of changing the door color .Yes I have that piece and it is for vinyl siding. Alumninum gets removed for the top down. So you have to remove from above to the point needed.