Exterior door material

[Jon Hutchinson]

I live in Central Florida (hot, humid, bugs, etc.). A friend wants me to build him 2 new exterior doors for his house. Neither door is covered by a porch roof. What wood would be the best to use for these doors? I considered poplar (for its low price - he's looking for bargain materials), but it may not hold up to the sun, heat and moisture. What other inexpensive wood would work here?

Thanks!

Jon

[lowell holmes]

Quartersawn white oak, mahogany, cypress, or sapele will handle moisture better than other woods. Poplar probably would rot in 2 or 3 seasons.

D grade fir might be good.

[Leo Graywacz]

Along with Lowells examples you could add Spanish Cedar.

[John R Green]

Jon,

I live in NE FL.
I sell all building materials for a living.
Don't do it.
No matter what wood you select, you will have bowing, warping & swelling problems.
Without any overhang for some protection, the problems will be compounded.
The problems will not help your friendship.
Tell him to go with a fiberglass door.
You can get them smooth or textured, stain or paint grade,
With panels or light inserts or both.

John

[Neal Clayton]

if you want a solid core exterior door, 'inexpensive' is not really congruent with the lumber for that.

in your area, mahogany would be the first choice. white oak is good as well. if you can get good old growth yellow pine (~10 growth rings per inch is the minimum i'd accept) that's a softwood option, but any softwood would be more delicate. if it will be painted inside and out this might not be a bad option depending on the price, you might find salvaged longleaf pine that would work. the douglas fir that lowell mentioned would be interchangeable with the pine, but old growth is key for stability. new growth lumber simply isn't stable enough.

solid core exterior door lumber should be quarter sawn first of all, so that's going to raise the price further. with sun and moisture exposure it can very easily warp. well acclimated quarter sawn lumber is the only way to avoid that, short of moving to a veneer over a more solid core.

if you do build it solid core, go as wide as possible on stiles/rails (5 inches for most lock sets) and make the tenons 2/3 the depth of the stiles. more is better, if you can come up with a design that employs more tenons and more panels, that's always a help in keeping it flat. using more and larger hinges also helps with that, for a common 80x36 exterior door i would use three 5" hinges.

porous hardwoods (like red oak, walnut, etc.) simply will not work. the water will eventually get in. if one or the other (or both) doors takes direct hits from the rain bolection molding around the panels isn't a bad idea either, for a barrier to keeping the rain further away from the panel grooves.

also choose your finish carefully, if it's not to be painted. weather exposed, stained wood will need a new coat of finish every 4 or 5 years depending on how dark the stain is, so don't use something like these polyurethane spar varnishes that must be removed before recoating.

for a simple square slab of wood alot goes into making a long lasting exterior door ;). not to say it can't be done, there are plenty of examples of centuries+ old solid core doors that are still in use on historic buildings, but there are more considerations than just fitting the parts together, so read the information out there and plan accordingly. there's a reason why quality solid exterior doors will typically start around 2500 dollars and go up from there depending on the size and complexity of the design.

[Karl Brogger]

What wood would be the best to use for these doors?

Look for steel, or composite trees.

[Steve Griffin]

I'd run away from this job as fast as I could.

I've built numerous doors and windows on several of my homes, most with high grade mahogany. All are maintenance curses. Our new addition proudly uses 100% non-wood windows/doors--as a woodworker, I've learned it's best to show of with the interior woodwork. How about offering your friend a beautiful sideboard entryway cabinet or bench?

If you friend had a large budget, fully understood the problems wood doors have and it was located in a spot which almost never sees sun or water, I might reluctantly consider it.

-Steve

[Neal Clayton]

i'm kinda the opposite, i have actually thrown away synthetic material windows and replaced them with wooden ones to match my house's 100+ year old originals, but i don't dispute that they are anything but maintenance free. then again, neither are the alternatives. most vinyl windows are shot in 10 years too, simply because that material is less stable than wood is.

the only difference is wood has the high upfront cost. for people who have the money or time (or both) to properly maintain them and have the need or desire (or both) for historically accurate architectural details, there's nothing wrong with wooden windows and doors.

but, as stated above, there's more to them than just cutting the parts and putting them together. it can all be learned, i've learned and wasn't around 100 years ago to see the old ones built first hand, but do learn before surfacing lumber and getting ready to build a door or window. buy some old millwork catalogs and look at the cutaway drawings, buy old carpentry manuals and look at the framing drawings and the designs used to channel water away. you need to know these things first. start at amazon with carpentry and millwork books older than 1930, then go to the lumberyard after ;).

[Peter Quinn]

Jon, I"m going with John G and Steve on this one. Don"t touch this with a ten foot pole. No portico or other protection from the Florida sun and a wooden door spells disaster in my mind. There is no cheap wood suitable for exterior work available at market prices. That"s like a cheap Manahatten apartment, sorry but they are gone! Unless a live oak or cypress or Cuban mahogany happens to fall in your friends back yard and he has it sawn, you are out of luck. Poplar won"t last 5 years to the weather as a door here in New England, so I doubt it will make it in Florida, plus it moves too much to perform well as an exterior door.

Check out those fiberglass units. They look very convincingly like mahogany, they seal well and last quite a longtime. And bugs don't like them. If you go with wood, you need to sell him a portico or porch with the deal, and he needs to increase his budget considerable. Doors are expensive for a reason.

[John Downey]

Run, don't walk, away from this...

Friend wants a wood door at a bargain in some of the worst possible conditions for a wood door. Going to be a nightmare - yes, that is the voice of experience :D

People seem to want their stuff to look new forever, especially if it's expensive stuff. Don't put yourself in the position of having to explain reality to them - Wood doors fade and wear, shrink and crack.

If I had to do the job, I would use mahogany, Spanish cedar, or white oak, fill the pores on the outside, prime it, and then paint it with the highest quality paint I could find (the $50+/gallon stuff, not junk from Home Depot). Save the nice wood grain for the inside where it won't be an everlasting "gee didn't that used to look nice when it was new" situation.

[Von Bickley]

Jon,

I live in NE FL.
I sell all building materials for a living.
Don't do it.
No matter what wood you select, you will have bowing, warping & swelling problems.
Without any overhang for some protection, the problems will be compounded.
The problems will not help your friendship.
Tell him to go with a fiberglass door.
You can get them smooth or textured, stain or paint grade,
With panels or light inserts or both.

John

I agree with John. Go with the fiberglass door. This is a picture of mine that has been stained.

[Rob Fisher]

A word about fiberglass, if you go that way. There are cheap fiberglass doors and expensive fiberglass doors. Good fiberglass doors cost nearly the same as good (commercially made) wood doors, they just tend to weather better.

No mater what material the door is made, in direct sunlight with no protection it will need to be repainted/seal fairly often. If there were some sort of porch or roof it could last much longer.

Rob

[Jon Hutchinson]

Thank you all for your suggestions and insights. I've built doors and windows before, just not for use in Florida. My friend's house is a 1920's wood bungalow. The doors are not standard size - he considered buying doors (from Lowe's or Home Depot) and cutting them down, but that's a bad idea. Then he asked me if I could build the doors to fit the frames. He really wants to stain the doors, not paint them. Cypress is available for a bit more than poplar; would cypress work? It'd work better with a roof over the porch areas, granted, but would it hold up for a while in Florida? Steel or fiberglass won't work since the doors would have to be cut down to fit the frames.

Jon

[Darin Kauffman]

What about reframing the opening to accommodate a standard size door height? I never got the chance to build a bungalow home, so I'm not familiar with the wall height in relation to header size and space. This could be a good option too.

[Bill White]

I think that ya got a BIG problem comin' at ya. Nope, I wouldn't take that job unless he ponys up the money for the right wood.
Bill

[John R Green]

What style doors do they want? Plain, panel, glass inserts?
What will be actual door size?

You can cut down a fiberglass door and re-rail it.
Voids the warranty but it will be better & faster than a real wood door.

John

[Peter Quinn]

Thank you all for your suggestions and insights. I've built doors and windows before, just not for use in Florida. My friend's house is a 1920's wood bungalow. The doors are not standard size - he considered buying doors (from Lowe's or Home Depot) and cutting them down, but that's a bad idea. Then he asked me if I could build the doors to fit the frames. He really wants to stain the doors, not paint them. Cypress is available for a bit more than poplar; would cypress work? It'd work better with a roof over the porch areas, granted, but would it hold up for a while in Florida? Steel or fiberglass won't work since the doors would have to be cut down to fit the frames.

Jon

I believe well seasoned cypress would work, though I have never built a door with it. Look for vertical grain material for stiles. Consider an epoxy primer with a marine grade finish, like Smiths CPES with an Epifanes top coat. Also consider that it will have to be sanded and refinished periodically, and most finish schedules say "DO NOT APPLY IN DIRECT SUNLIGHT", so either the door comes off the house, or you build a tent in front of the door to apply the finish.

I'm confused about how a bungalow would be built without a front porch or at least a significant soffit? I live in a bungalow and there is almost 16" between my front door and the weather due to the porch and soffit, both of which are generally central features of the style. It is a very sensible design from that standpoint. Can you tell your friend "The door is going to cost you $75K, but it comes with a new facade and porch?"

Have you looked at a custom size door from a fiberglass manufacturer? I guess a lot of bungalows had large front doors in the 42"X96" range to get that bulky mission style furniture in the house!

[Neal Clayton]

i build windows out of cypress but for doors, they'll be awfully subject to dents and dings. cypress is softer than even most yellow pines.

on the upside cypress lasts in the weather a lot longer than other species since it has a natural oil that the tree produces that gives it some extra sun/water resistance, so from that standpoint it'll be fine.

agree with peter on using quartersawn stiles at least, if not quartersawn for both rails and stiles.

as stated above, the more joints you can incorporate into the door the better odds of it staying straight over time. and forget about anything other than mortise/tenon, otherwise it'll be warped by this year's winter.