Patio and Entry Door Replacement

A door is a window that people lean on, kick, and slam a few thousand times a year, and it is the only opening in your house that has to seal while it moves. That is why doors fail in ways windows do not. The slider that used to glide now takes a shoulder. The French pair that latched fine in March binds in August. The entry door shows a line of daylight at the lower corner on a windy night.

Almost all of that traces back to three things: how the door operates, what is happening at the threshold, and how much weather that wall takes. We match Wasatch Front homeowners with contractors who look at all three before they open a catalog, because a beautiful door hung over a sagging sill will disappoint you on exactly the same schedule the old one did, only with a nicer handle on it.

Where doors actually go wrong

• Sliding patio doors. Rollers, track, and a heavy panel fighting gravity. A slider that drags is usually telling you about the track and the floor before it is telling you about the door.
• French and swing patio doors. Two panels that must meet in the middle and stay met through a hot August. Binding, a latch that misses, and visible daylight all trace back to alignment.
• Entry doors and sidelites. The most-used opening in the house and often the most exposed. Sidelites add glass and more joints to keep sealed, and a storm door adds trapped heat.
• Thresholds and sill pans. Where water goes to find out whether anyone did this correctly. An adjustable threshold buys you sealing; a proper sill pan buys you a floor that is not rotting.
• Weatherstripping and sweeps. The parts that wear out first and get replaced least. Worth checking before you decide the whole door is finished, particularly on one that still operates well.
• Trim, capping, and jamb extensions. Doors sit in thicker walls than windows and need the inside and outside made whole again. That is finish work, and it belongs on the quote as its own line.

How a door replacement runs

1. Operate it while someone watches. Open, close, latch, and lock the door with the contractor standing there. Half of a door diagnosis is watching where it catches and hearing where the seal stops touching.
2. Check the threshold and the floor. Doors telegraph what is underneath them. A soft spot, a stained subfloor, or a sill out of level turns a swap into a repair before anything gets ordered.
3. Size the unit and order it. Doors are ordered by opening, swing, and handing, and getting handing wrong is a remake rather than an adjustment. Confirm the swing and which side the hinges land on.
4. Set, shim, seal, and adjust. A door is only as good as it is plumb. Expect real time spent shimming, sealing the pan, and adjusting the strike so it latches without a hip check.

What it costs

Door quotes swing on things that have little to do with the panel you picked. Count the openings and their sizes. Decide whether the frame comes out entirely or a new unit goes into the existing one. Note the material and how it operates, since a slider, a swing pair, and an entry unit with sidelites are three different labor days. Ask whether exterior capping, interior casing, jamb extensions, and a new threshold or sill pan are included or excluded. Then ask what happens if the subfloor under the threshold turns out to be soft, because that is the one that changes a number after the fact.

Questions people ask