My wife and I are both 35 and we just bought our first house. The realtor told us that the previous owner replaced the front door a few years ago so it's fairly new. Most of the houses in our neighborhood with the same layout as ours have a very wide false double door. On the outside it looks like a double door. On the inside, it's a single door with a sidelight. The false door was on the other side of the kitchen closet. When they replaced the door, they put stucco over the area where the false door was. By looking at it, it's almost impossible to tell that there ever was a false door there. The new door is very nice, with a beveled glass window in both the door and sidelight. It's very energy efficient too, which is important.

My wife doesn't like the door. At first I thought maybe she didn't like the design of the window, but no. She said that she wishes we had the "nice double door" that all our neighbors have, and that the empty wall space between the door and the kitchen window is ugly. She was under the impression that all our neighbors had replaced their doors and put in the double door. I reminded her that the previous owners had replaced the door, but she didn't believe me because "Nobody would make the door smaller." I told her that there was never a double door there because it's where the kitchen is. She eventually thought that maybe the previous owners had to make the door smaller when they remodeled the kitchen. I would be inclined to consider this if it weren't for the fact that it's clearly the original kitchen which could use a renovation.

Last week, the neighbor across the street invited us over. It was the first time my wife and I had been in any of the neighbors' houses. This neighbor's kitchen looked almost exactly like ours, and the inside of the door was in the exact same place as ours is. My wife said "My husband was thinking that our front door is nice, but I like your door so much better!" The neighbor asked why this was, and my wife said that the new door is too small. The neighbor said that she always thought that the false double door was tacky because it was very obviously fake, and that if it weren't for the amount of work that would need to be done, they would have replaced theirs a long time ago. They also told us that there were many other houses in the neighborhood that had replaced their doors on some of the other streets.

I thought this would convince her that replacing the door was a bad idea, but it wasn't. She still thinks the door looks ugly because of the empty wall space where the fake door was, even after we looked at some of the other houses with replacement doors, and they all look very similar to ours. A few days ago, my wife said that she was going to have a contractor come out to give an estimate on replacing the door. I wanted to tell her that she was crazy, but then I decided that perhaps if she got a professional opinion about replacing the door, she'd have a change of heart. So the contractor came out and the first thing that he said was "Why do you want to replace this nice door?" My wife told him, and he looked at her as if she was crazy. He said that he highly recommended that we don't do this because it would be very expensive and a lot of work. I thought this would be enough to convince her, but when he left, she said that she wanted to get a second opinion.

I am now at my wit's end! I've told her that we are not replacing the door for the reasons the contractor said, that her fixation on the door is insane, and if she doesn't like the empty wall space, there are a bunch of things we could do to make it look a bit less plain that would be a lot less work (right now there's absolutely nothing in that spot but we could easily put a chair to sit in, or a plant, etc.) and that there are a bunch of other renovation projects that are much higher priority that we need to do. We've been having heated arguments about it. I would've thought that finally owning a house would be something to be happy about, but if she's going to be like this, I'm not sure if I want to be with her. Part of me feels though that maybe I should just let her replace the door in order to make her happy, even though it's a waste of time and money.