Exterior Door Installationin North Alabama

Entry doors

Your front door carries the most use, the most weather and most of your home's first impression. We install fiberglass, steel and wood entry doors, with sidelights or a transom if you want more light.

Patio and sliding doors

Large glass doors that open onto a deck or patio. Sliders cost less, need no room to swing and give the most glass for the opening.

Exterior French doors

A hinged pair that meets in the center, with one active door and one usually held shut by flush bolts. Both can open for a wide clear opening, and they seal better than a slider because they press against the frame.

Storm doors

A second door mounted outside the front door. On an exposed entry it takes the weather off the main door, and it adds ventilation.

A door is the hardest-working opening in a house. It gets opened thousands of times a year, it carries its own weight on hinges, and its threshold sits at the one place where water collects.

Humidity swells wood doors and warps them out of shape, which is why the door that closed cleanly in February drags in August. Fiberglass and steel do not move the same way.

Threshold rot is the most common failure we see, and it is almost always an installation problem rather than a product problem: no sill pan, or flashing lapped the wrong way.

Sill pan

Every exterior door we set gets a sloped, sealed sill pan with end dams, the raised ends that stop water running off the sides. This one detail decides whether the threshold framing is still sound in ten years.

Flashing and drainage

Head flashing above the door, side flashing lapped over the pan, and the weather barrier behind the siding tied in so water sheds outward.

Squaring and reveal

The frame is set plumb, with an even reveal (the gap between door and frame) top to bottom, so the weatherstrip presses evenly all the way around. An uneven reveal is why a new door still whistles.

Hardware and strike

Strike plates screwed into the framing, not just the jamb trim. Long screws at the hinges on any door that carries real weight.

The sill pan is the step most often skipped, because nobody can see it once the door is in. It is also the reason a threshold fails from underneath when it is missing.

When an old door has been leaking at the threshold, we photograph any rot and show you before the framing is rebuilt and the new door goes in. Nothing gets covered up.

A sticking door

Often a hinge problem. Long screws into the framing at the top hinge fix a surprising number of doors that seem to need replacing.

A drafty door

Often a weatherstrip problem. The seals wear out and can be replaced on most doors.

A hard-to-slide patio door

Usually worn rollers and a dirty track. Cleaning and new rollers cost a fraction of a new door. We check that first, and we will tell you if that is all it needs.

A dark door on a south or west entry with no overhang will move more than the same door in shade, which is worth knowing before you pick a color.

A full-glass storm door in front of a dark entry door can trap heat between the two, sometimes enough to warp the door it was meant to protect. A ventilated or partly screened storm door releases that heat and removes the risk.