Thanks for your input. I don't yet have a shot from outside (we just got snow, and it's March!), but here is a pic from the inside. Door is so pretty. WindowsonWashington - the entryway does not have a porch. There is a stoop and a few steps. And I do remember the installer saying something about the new door unit being slightly smaller than the old door's opening. I think he also said that the Timberframe is harder to adjust for that than a wood frame, but I am not certain.

We got our entry doors at Clark Hall right there in Charlotte. I think they are on Tremont. Ours was custom, but they have in-stock doors, too. Ours is mahogany double door as well.

The most recent photo makes it look closer to city walk than first pictures alludes to. If you would, take the foundation planting pictures from the front/center position while standing on the city walk. All pictures must be taken from exact same location, pivoting camera. Do not change the camera position between photos. Please give a full 180* sweep of slightly overlapping photos (street will show in first and last photo.) And then also take the separate distance picture from across the street.

If you want an entry area, put up a wall and have one. We have a home now where someone knocked out the wall between the nice entry and the living room and we basically put the wall back with a shoe bench and shelf arrangement (freestanding because we didn’t want to do construction work) because it just flows better that way. We also just looked at another house which we decided not to go for after much deliberation in part because if we opened it up to get much needed space, we’d end up with a big box with the front door entering right into everything, like a small apartment layout. Houses, especially houses with kids and lots of visitors, need some way to control the flow of traffic and direct people to where they should take off coats and boots and what have you. If you have room for a mud room, great, but if not - entry area is a necessity, IMO. And people are going to be beyond bored with HGTV style everything probably sooner rather than later - next year or the year after it’ll be some other designer and they will be putting walls up because everyone is sick of open plan and always being on display while cooking. If this is your forever home then do what you like and what feels good to you, not what’s popular on HGTV. (If you were going to flip the house then I might be saying something different.) Personally, if my front door were that close to my kitchen, I’d really really really want some kind of wall for privacy. Who wants all your mid-meal cooking mess to be on display to anyone who comes to the door?