Replacement Doors

[Steve Kohn]

I have two doors that are long overdue for replacement. Both doors will be painted.

#1 is the front door. Currently it's a steel 36 inch door with two sidelights. I'm planning on going with fiberglass replacements.

#2 is a patio door that was used to a 3 season porch on the back of the house. The current door is a 6 foot wooden French door, single pane, that doesn't seal worth a darn. I think it is actually an interior door that was thrown in to keep the cost down. I'm also thinking of going fiberglass with this door.

My questions are: how do you accurately measure the opening to get the doors ordered, any reason to not use fiberglass, and any suggestions on brands of doors to use?

[Andrew Kertesz]

Measurement depends on whether you are going with slab doors or pre-hung. On the patio door I would go with an insulated, double pane slider. To measure a pre-hung unit you can take the casing off and measure the opening but everything is pretty standard unless it is a custom job. If you have the door sizes any of the home centers should be able to help you order the right thing.

[Matt Meiser]

I've replaced 3 doors since moving here. My shop i bought an inexpensive steel one with a wood frame. Looks all dinged up (and the cheap wood frame hasn't exactly held up well either.) The two on the house I did fiberglass and both still look great. Both of those claimed to have "rot proof" frames. We're about to reside the shop, and I'm going to have the contractor install a new fiberglass door as part of the project. Eventually we need to replace the back door to the deck too and it will be fiberglass. Our front door I have no idea on the brand. The other one I bought was off the shelf from Lowes--its a Therma-Tru I believe--nice door. Due to the timing it sat unpainted over a winter and the factory finish did fine. The first nice warm but not too hot spring day I painted it. I don't think i'd risk that with steel. If you bump something into a steel door its going to dent. Fiberglass has a certain amount of give. The steel is so thin, I wouldn't be surprised if their puncture-resistance isn't about the same.

FYI, I regularly see really nice front entry doors on clearance at the big boxes that are often mis-orders. Our front door was one of those. Home Depot mis-ordered someone's door THREE TIMES and one was perfect for us except the whole assembly was 3" too narrow due to a narrower sidelite than we had. We added a 2x6 on each side, I made new trim PVC trim to replace the brick mold, and we did some minor drywall patching inside, replaced a couple pieces of baseboard with scraps from another project, and you'd never know. Saved over $1000 on a really nice door with leaded glass in the door and sidelite.