I love my house.  Really love it.  The problem is, we live on a mountain, and we have such a tremendous wind exposure that when someone opens the front Door, if there is ANY other window open in the house, it creates a cross-breeze reminiscent of the tornado in the Wizard of Oz.  You can see in the picture below that a floor-to-ceiling height closet door literally got ripped off of its hinges last week when I opened the front door for barely a second.  So what’s a girl (with 4 little kids) to do?

After consulting with various contractors, engineers, decorators, and just generally smart people, the solution that we came up with would be to install an external Glass Door that will buffer the wind so that it won’t be as damaging inside our house.  With the help of a very talented neighbor, Marc Gottlieb, I designed a fantastic stained glass door, which I thought would really make a statement when guests arrived.  Unfortunately, such a masterpiece was WAY above my budget (if you want to see the design though, you can email me!).  So I took a stencil design offered by my contractor for a fraction of the price.  Does that sound like a cop out?  Or a decent way to save money while still springing for something relatively decorative, instead of just plain glass?  Curious to hear your opinions.