Exterior Doors in Worcester, MA

Andersen Windows And Doors

Andersen is what I put in my own house, so I'll admit the bias up front. Their A-Series and 400 Series units come with a factory finish that holds up to a Worcester winter better than anything I can brush on in a driveway in February, and the composite sill under a Frenchwood gliding patio door doesn't drink up the meltwater that runs off Route 9 slush on your boots. That matters here. Andersen windows and doors are a big share of what we set at Worcester Window Replacement, alongside fiberglass entry doors when someone wants a paint colour that won't chalk.

The thing people skip is the opening. A beautiful unit screwed into a punky jamb will sag by spring, so replacing door frames is often part of the day, not an upsell. Exterior door installation done right takes most of a day per opening.

Door With Sliding Window

Half the back doors in this city have one: a small sliding sash set right in the panel so you can move some air through the kitchen in August without swinging the whole slab open.

The part that fails is the track. A door with sliding window has weep holes along the bottom rail, and they pack with pollen and maple seed by June. Once the water can't drain it sits against the gasket, and come January it freezes the sash solid. Second failure is worse: cutting a vent into a slab that wasn't factory prepped for it. You lose the foam core, the warranty goes with it, and the thing seals about as well as a screen door on a submarine. We order the unit with the opening already in it.

Sound jamb, it's a half day. Rotted sill and we're replacing door frames first.

Outdoor French Doors

French doors are the ones people picture opening onto a deck with a coffee in hand, and then February shows up and reminds you they're two doors sharing one weak point: the astragal in the middle. Get that wrong and you'll feel the draft from the couch.

Most of the trouble I see on out-swing and in-swing pairs comes down to the sill. A French pair is heavy, and if the opening isn't shimmed dead level and flat, the inactive leaf drops and the two doors stop meeting. On a Worcester three-decker with a settled deck header, that means replacing door frames rather than just hanging new slabs on the old one.

Fiberglass doors handle our freeze-thaw better than wood out there. Same sill-pan and flashing discipline we bring to Worcester Window Replacement applies here, because exterior door installation lives and dies on water management.

Therma Doors

Therma-Tru builds a fiberglass slab around a polyurethane foam core, and that core is the whole point. It holds heat far better than the hollow steel entry doors half the neighbourhood inherited from the eighties. A February wind coming across Newton Hill finds a bad door in about four seconds.

Wood swells in July and shrinks in January, so it sticks, then it gaps. Fiberglass doesn't care. The composite bottom rail matters just as much, because that's where snowmelt sits and where rot starts on a wood door.

A straight swap into a sound opening is a morning's work. Soft jambs change that, since replacing door frames means opening the wall and checking the sill before anything gets hung.

The same crew doing your Worcester Window Replacement handles these, so the trim and finish match instead of nearly matching.

Jeld Wen Windows Doors

JELD-WEN is the brand I reach for when somebody wants a solid door without a custom-order wait through half the winter. Their prehung units come standard sizes, so a 36 by 80 in stock steel or fiberglass can be hanging in a day, while a special size or a glass upgrade runs several weeks out from the mill. Their wood exterior doors use AuraLast pine, which holds up against rot better than the raw pine jambs that come rotted at the bottom eight inches after a few Worcester winters of salt spray and ice melt.

The part that gets skipped is the sill. If the composite sill isn't bedded in a full bead of sealant and the jamb isn't shimmed plumb at the hinges, water tracks under it. Plenty of these go in alongside a Worcester Window Replacement so the house is torn open once, not twice.

Front Entry Doors With Glass

Glass is the part of a door people fall for, and the part that fails first. A fogged sidelight on a west-facing porch off Pleasant Street means the seal on that insulated unit let go, and no amount of Windex brings it back. Once moisture is between the panes, you are replacing glass, sometimes the whole slab.

I fit half-lite, three-quarter lite and full-lite front entry doors, plus sidelights and transoms. Tempered glass is standard anywhere the pane sits within reach of the latch, and reeded or obscure glass keeps the mail carrier from taking inventory of your hallway. The same low-E coating we spec on a Worcester Window Replacement goes into the lites, so an exterior door with window glass isn't the cold spot you walk past every February morning.

Most of these go in inside a day, assuming the frame underneath is still sound.

Door Replacements

Most door replacements I look at in Worcester fall into two camps. Either the slab is fine and the frame behind it has gone soft, or the whole unit has to come out. On a 1910 triple decker off Pleasant Street, nothing is square, so we scribe, shim and check plumb at three points before a single screw goes in. Skip that step and the door binds every August and rattles all February.

A straight swap into a sound opening takes most of a day. Once we are replacing door frames, cutting rot back at the sill and flashing the pan the right way, plan on two. Exterior doors move with the weather here, fiberglass doors far less than wood, which matters when a nor'easter drives rain sideways at your front step. The same crew handles Worcester Window Replacement, so casings and trim actually match.

Entry Doors

Your entry door takes more abuse than anything else on the house. Slammed with an armful of groceries, kicked shut, and hit by every northeaster that rolls over Bancroft Tower in February. So when I look at entry doors here, I start at the bottom corners of the jamb, because that is where Worcester rot begins: snow piles on the step, melts, refreezes, and wicks up into the wood.

A proper swap means pulling the old unit, checking the subfloor and sill, flashing the pan, then shimming plumb at every hinge and setting the lock side so it seals evenly top to bottom. Low expansion foam around the frame, never batt stuffed in the gap.

Most of what we hang at Worcester Window Replacement is fiberglass or steel, and a straightforward exterior door installation is a one day job unless the framing surprises us.

Modern Front Entry Doors

Clean lines, no raised panels, a smooth skin painted something serious like graphite or deep green. That's what most people mean by modern front entry doors, and the triple deckers off Burncoat wear them better than you'd guess.

Smooth-skin fiberglass is the workhorse. It holds a dark color through a July afternoon without the bowing a wood slab gives you, and it won't dent like a thin steel skin when a delivery guy swings a box into it. Most fiberglass entry doors we hang get a multipoint lock and a composite sill, which earns its keep when the wind comes off 290 in January.

Here's the step that gets skipped: squaring the opening. Out by a quarter inch and the gap along the top goes wedge-shaped forever. The crew running Worcester Window Replacement shims and checks the same way before anything gets fastened.

Steel Entry Doors

Steel gets underrated because people picture a warehouse. A modern insulated slab is 24 or 25 gauge skin over a polyurethane foam core, with a thermal break at the edge so the frame doesn't sweat in January, and it holds a deadbolt strike better than almost anything else we hang. If you want security and a door that won't warp on a west facing wall, steel entry doors are hard to beat.

Here's the honest part. Steel dents and it remembers, like a Sox fan remembers 1986. Bike handlebars, a wheelbarrow, road salt splashing up off Park Ave, and that bottom edge starts to bloom rust if the paint gets chipped and nobody touches it up.

We check the sill and jamb before anything gets ordered, because the same crew that handles Worcester Window Replacement has seen too many good slabs hung in soft framing.

Entry Door Replacement

Stand at your front door in February, on one of those mornings when the wind comes down off Newton Hill and finds every gap. Feel it on your ankles? That is usually the jamb, not the slab.

A proper entry door replacement means pulling the old unit out to the framing and looking at what the last thirty winters did to the sill and the bottom eight inches of the jambs. Rot there is common on any Worcester porch that catches snow. Replacing door frames when they need it costs a couple of hours, and skipping it means your shiny new door sits crooked by spring.

Most exterior door installation runs half a day per opening. Plenty of folks book door replacements alongside Worcester Window Replacement on the same visit, so we set up once and your house is open to the cold for less time.

What the job involves

Here's what a real exterior door installation looks like at your house. We pull the old unit, slab and frame together, because leaving a tired jamb behind and hanging a new door on it is how you end up replacing door frames twice. Then we look at the sill and the framing underneath. In Worcester, with the freeze and thaw we get from December through March, rot under the threshold is common, and if we find it we fix it before anything new goes in.

After that it's a sill pan, shims until the reveal is even top to bottom, low-expansion foam, flashing tape, and trim.

Most entry door replacement jobs run a single day. Skip the pan and the shimming and the door drags by its first February.

Same crew that handles Worcester Window Replacement does this work.

What it costs

What moves the price on exterior doors around here? Mostly the things you can't see from the porch.

A straight swap into a sound opening is a morning's work. Pull the casing on a Grafton Hill triple decker, though, and you may find twenty winters of salt and meltwater soaked into the sill. Now we're replacing door frames, sistering rot out of the jack studs and rebuilding the threshold before the new unit ever comes off the truck. Material shifts things too: steel entry doors sit at one end, fiberglass entry doors in the middle, wood exterior doors with a real stained finish at the top. Sidelights, or an exterior door with window glass, add cost before we touch a tool. And the same measuring discipline behind our Worcester Window Replacement applies here, because an off size opening means a special order and a longer wait.

Why choose us for this

You've been leaning on that door with your hip since the first real cold snap, and the weatherstrip is doing nothing. You want it fixed once and then forgotten.

So here's what I won't do.

I won't quote one number on the phone and a fatter one on the invoice. I won't open your wall and then disappear to a job on Grafton Hill for three days. I won't tell you the price dies at midnight. I won't leave old jamb wood and shims in your hedge.

I'm not the cheapest bid you'll get. If the sill is soft, that means replacing door frames, not just hanging a slab in rot and calling it entry door replacement. Fiberglass doors and steel cost more than the builder special, and they still shut right in February.

The crew doing Worcester Window Replacement handles exterior doors too, so the trim matches. Estimates cost nothing and oblige you to nothing.

Frequently asked questions