Repair & Improve

Package Your Home for the Holidays

Tips from Therma-Tru to make your guests feel at home

With the holiday season right around the corner, now is the perfect time for homeowners to spruce up the exterior of their homes with a festive entryway before guests arrive. 

Many homeowners view their entryway as a sign of the quality of their house, and the holidays are the ideal time to show off a beautiful home.  A festive holiday entry can be the home’s focal point, and serves as a first impression for both its interior and exterior. 

Therma-Tru Doors, the nation’s most preferred brand of entry doors and the expert on creating beautiful entries, offers tips for creating a warm and inviting entryway during the holidays:

Hang seasonal door decorations

• Design a heart-shaped wreath with miniature pine cones and dye them a brilliant shade of red
• Mount an evergreen wreath or swag with glass ornaments or silver bells
• Create a wreath with Magnolia leaves and fresh fruit such as pears, apples and pomegranates
• If you have a rustic style home, consider adding antlers, a cowboy hat or roping to your wreath
• For a coastal home, consider a wreath of woven sea grass with sea shells or brightly painted life preserver with lights and decorative glass floats
• If your door doesn’t merit all the attention, consider wrapping it in bright paper with a large bow or framing it in lights
• Hang a set of sleigh bells on the door knob, which will give a festive jingle every time guests pass through

Add accessories around the doorway

• Frame your entryway with garland and lights – add bows or pine cones for more decorative detail
• Place pots or urns planted with seasonal greenery, poinsettias and lights on either side of the doorway
• Put out a welcome mat designed with holiday accents
• Add new brass or nickel accents such as kick plate, porch lights and door knocker to dress up your door
• Hang matching wreaths and candles in all of the windows

Paint your door

• Brighten up your door with a fresh coat of red paint or a strong color that provides contrast to your current color scheme before the weather gets too cold to paint outdoors

When decorating, be careful to protect your door. You don’t want to put a nail in the door, because this can lead to damage later on.  Instead, use a door hanger to hang the wreath from the door knocker, or place a tack on the top of the door frame and use clear fishing line to hang the wreath.

In addition to these simple design tips, homeowners may also want to consider taking advantage of this opportunity to update their entryway with a new energy-efficient door system.  You can replace the door with a new high-performance, low-maintenance fiberglass door system.

Fiberglass is growing in popularity with homeowners because the doors are easy to maintain and will withstand a wide range of temperatures and weather elements such as strong winds, high-humidity and frequent rain. What’s more, fiberglass doors offer five times the insulation of wood and won’t rot, crack or split like wood doors, or dent, rust or corrode like steel doors. The doors are ENERGY STAR qualified providing excellent thermal protection and comfort for your family and holiday house guests.

Home break-ins are sure to spoil the joy of the holidays if your home and valuables aren’t secure. The entry and patio door is a prime target for intruders seeking holiday loot. Therma-Tru doors are more resistant to forced entry than wood doors due to an adjustable security strike plate that withstands 450 pounds of force. Therma-Tru’s fiberglass doors have also been honored by The Home Safety Council, which recognizes products and manufacturers for their safety innovations. In addition, fiberglass doors can be produced to meet fire resistance standards providing homeowners added safety and peace-of-mind, and Therma-Tru's hand-made decorative, break-resistant tempered glass helps protect from the elements and intruders.

Therma-Tru Doors wishes you and your family a very safe and happy holiday season.

For more information on Therma-Tru Doors, visit www.thermatru.com.  The Web site features an interactive Door Designer tool that lets users mix and match door styles, glass sidelites and transoms to create the look they want.

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