Daily Home Renovation Tips

In Part 25 we wrote about how on June 13th (Friday the 13th) the second replacement front door was installed.

In this article we look at the differences between the first and this second front door.

First, this door is wider. How can that be? Did we ask for it to be wider? No. Let me explain what was told to us.

When you go to a retail store and order a replacement door and frame, the retailer takes your measurements (or the measurements that they took on your behalf … which was the case with us) and sends to order to the door manufacturer.

Mass production manufacturing is the least cost of constructing anything. Produce the same thing in exactly the same way to the identical specifications (height, width, thickness, etc.) and the manufacturing costs will be less.

So, let’s say your measurements show that the hole in the wall into which  your current door and frame reside is 70 and 1/2 inches. Well, if most of the homes who use the manufacturer’s replacement front door need say 68 inches wide, they will make for you a 68 inch wide door frame and leave it to the installer to figure out the best approach to fill the additional 2 and 1/2 inches difference.

I am not saying this is a good or a bad approach.  I’m just saying this is the approach that was used for our replacement door #1.

How do I know this? Well, when replacement door #2 was first put in place in the front of our house I noticed that there was a lot less gap on the sides of the frame to the wall itself. So I asked if it was just my imagination and Mike (the installer) said no, it was wider and he told me why. This door was constructed by a different manufacturer who had slightly different specifications . Here’s a picture of door #2’s interior left (from the inside). Notice only a little of the spray foam insulation is needed.

He also told me that this door was made of steel whereas the prior door was not. I could not tell the difference myself but that was nice to hear. Can you tell the difference? Below is a picture of one of the sides of the first door with the glass insert removed. Look at the thickness of the metal on either side of the insulation.

And now is a picture of the second door, again taken of one of the sides prior to the glass insert.

I can’t really tell but perhaps you can. It does appear as if the insulation in door #2 (the lower picture) is more compact than that for door #1. I don’t know if this has any impact on it’s R value or not. I’ll try to find out and if I do I’ll let y’all know.

In our next article we will go over additional differences between the two replacement doors which we really like and one that we do not.

To continue with the next article in this series, simply select this link to Part 27.