Cold air on your ankles in the hall, and daylight showing along the latch side.
Half the exterior doors I pull out of Worcester houses were never really the problem. The jamb rotted at the bottom, the sill went soft under it, and the slab just took the blame. So no, I will not hang a nice new door in a mushy frame and call it done, because you will feel that draft again by the second cold snap.
A stock 32x80 exterior door sounds like a simple swap until the opening turns out to be an inch and a half off square, which near Kelley Square is most of them.
Size, the glass, whether the frame comes out too, and how much sill we find: that decides the number. Below is how the work actually goes and what folks ask first. Call (508) 406-9528 and I will come take a look.
Exterior Double Front Doors
Exterior double front doors are two doors doing one door's job, and the whole pair lives or dies on the astragal where they meet. The inactive leaf needs flush bolts landing in solid strikes top and bottom. Skip that and you've got a slab that flexes in a gust and never quite latches.
I look at the header before anything else. A pair wants roughly six feet of clear opening, so going from a 32x80 exterior door to a double means new framing, and that framing moves the price far more than the slabs do. Sidelights, exterior doors with glass in the panels and a multipoint lock all push it too.
Two 36 exterior door leaves hung in an out-of-square opening give you a tapered gap you can read from the sidewalk, which is why our window replacement company sets shims and reveals before a hinge screw goes anywhere near that wide exterior front door frame.
Wood Exterior Doors
Wood exterior doors are the ones people fall for, and I get it. A stain grade mahogany or fir slab has a depth no molded skin quite fakes. Real wood asks for something back, though. The killer is unfinished end grain. Skip the top and bottom edges when you finish it, and water wicks straight up into the slab, the stiles swell, and by the muggy stretch in July you're shouldering an exterior front door that swung sweetly in April.
I seal all six sides before it ever hangs.
Plenty of the exterior doors Lowe's stocks are perfectly good wood, by the way. The trouble is almost always the hanging, not the slab.
Species, slab thickness, whether we're setting a fresh frame, and anything wider than a stock 32x80 exterior door are what push the number around.
Exterior Doors With Glass
Exterior doors with glass are the ones people fall in love with in the showroom, and they're the ones I ask the most questions about. How much glass, and which way does the door face? A half-lite brings light into a dark triple-decker hallway without baking your entry on a west-facing porch.
Full-view glass looks terrific and insulates like a paper bag, and if the door sits within arm's reach of the lock, I want laminated glass in it rather than plain tempered.
The failure I see most is the doorlite seal letting go. The pane fogs, and on plenty of the stock exterior doors Lowe's and the big boxes keep on the rack, that insert isn't replaceable, so a hazy window means a whole new slab. Glass package, decorative caming and sidelights move the number far more than whether you need a 32x80 exterior door or a 36 exterior door.
Exterior Front Door
Your exterior front door is the one thing on the house every guest puts a hand on, and usually the one nobody has touched since the porch went up. Most of what I pull off the triple deckers here is a 36 exterior door hung in an opening that has settled a good quarter inch out of square, so the latch only catches if you shoulder it.
Doing it right means the jamb comes out with the slab: I look at the sill and the framing under it for rot, set a sill pan, shim the hinge side plumb, then flash and trim so water runs off instead of sitting there. A stock slab out of the exterior doors aisle at Lowe's hangs fine, but only in a frame that's square and dry, and that framing is where the real labor goes.
What the job involves
Most of what the job involves happens long before the new unit goes anywhere near the opening. We pull the casing and the old jamb, then get a real look at the sill and the framing under it, which on plenty of Worcester houses is where twenty-odd years of snowmelt has been quietly parked. Soft wood comes out and gets replaced. What I won't do is set a new slab on a sill that flexes when you step on it.
Then the unit goes in plumb, shimmed behind every hinge and at the strike, flashed at the sill, and foamed with something that won't bow the jamb and leave you shouldering the latch in February cold.
If you've been pricing exterior doors at Lowe's, the slab is the easy part. Rot, resizing the rough opening, brick returns, and exterior double front doors with sidelights are what stretch the day.
What it costs
What it costs comes down less to the door than to what's holding it up. Size drives it, and exterior double front doors with sidelights need roughly double the framing of a single opening. Wood exterior doors run higher to buy and higher to finish, because they want paint or stain on all six sides before they ever get hung.
The rest of the number shows up when the old unit comes off: a punky sill, soft subfloor under the threshold, siding that has to be cut back so a sill pan and flashing can go in properly. Skip that pan and the water heads into the floor instead of out over the trim, and you buy the same doorway twice.
Give me a call at (508) 406-9528 with the width of your opening and I can put a real figure on it.
The exterior doors Lowe's keeps on the rack are decent enough slabs. What you're paying a crew for is the framing and flashing behind them.
When exterior doors are the wrong fix
Sometimes exterior doors aren't the fix at all. If the slab and hinges are sound but the jamb legs are soft at the bottom and the subfloor under the threshold gives when you step on it, a new door just bolts good hardware onto rot. Framing first, door second, and how far the water traveled decides how big the job gets.
Other times it's the wrong opening entirely. A cold front room is usually the double hung windows, not the entry, and plenty of those calls end up as window replacement in the living room instead. The window installation is the shorter day of the two. A dark back wall where a swing door eats floor space wants patio doors. A basement bedroom needs egress windows before anybody can legally sleep down there.
And two leaves where the framing fits one means cutting a new header, so exterior double front doors stop being a door swap.
Why choose us for this
You've got exterior doors that swell shut in the damp, show daylight at the latch side, and you'd like to hire this out once and not think about it again for years.
So here's the part that matters. What I won't do is set a new slab on a soft sill plate and caulk the gap shut. That door swings fine for a season, then the threshold sinks, the latch stops catching, and you're calling somebody again. If the framing under yours is punky, we cut it back and rebuild first.
That's also why my number can come in over a figure somebody gave you on the phone, because a phone figure assumes nothing is wrong under there.
Rot, sidelights, and whether the frame comes out with the door are what shift the cost. Coming out to measure costs you nothing and obliges you to nothing.
Frequently asked questions
How long is my house open to the street while you work?
Most exterior doors are done in two to three hours, and the opening itself is only bare for about twenty minutes of that. We hang plastic over the inside of the doorway, pull the old unit, set and shim the new one, then foam and trim. If the sill is rotted and the framing needs repair, plan on the better part of a day.
Can you just swap the door and keep the frame?
Sometimes, yes. If the jamb is square, the hinges line up and the sill is solid, a slab swap is fine. Once water has worked under the threshold and softened the bottom six inches of jamb, new hardware just hangs on soft wood and the latch drifts out by the second cold spell. Replacing the frame and sill moves the price more than the door does.
Will you hang a door I bought myself?
Yes. We fit plenty of exterior doors Lowe's and the other big box stores keep in stock, prehung or slab. One warning: wood exterior doors that sat in an unheated garage can cup, so we check the slab is flat and the hinge stile is true before anything gets screwed to your framing.
Contact Worcester Window Replacement now
Ready to stop shouldering that thing open with your hip? Call me about Worcester window replacement or a new set of exterior doors and the first thing that happens is I measure the opening itself, not the slab sitting in it. Houses down around the Canal District have settled a good century's worth, and the frame is almost never square anymore, which is why a door ordered off a tape measure reading comes back rubbing at the top corner.
If the exterior doors Lowe's has in stock genuinely fit your rough opening, I'll tell you so. If they don't, I'd rather build the jamb to your house than plane a door until the weatherstrip stops touching.
Reach me at (508) 406-9528, weekdays nine to five. Leave a message if I'm on a job and I'll call you back.