Front doors bridge the gap between your home and the outside world. Providing security, insulation and protection against fire and the elements, your front door usually has warm connotations and is perceived as being a firm sign that you’re home. That is, until you start to try and install one. Front doors are notoriously difficult to install, having much more complex issues surrounding their fitting that internal doors. Because the front door must be so much more robust and provide more functions than interior doors, it requires a bit more thought in order to install correctly.
Pre-hung?
If you’ve got the choice when it comes to buying your front door, choose one that is already pre-hung to boycott that complicated step from the installation process. A pre-hung door it one that is already supported by hinges and just needs attaching to the door frame. Without it, there are all sorts of issues like working with hinges and chiselling (for wooden doors), as well as measuring and a whole host of other intermediate DIY skills. For the beginner, pre-hung is definitely much less of a struggle.
Hanging the door involves connecting it to the door frame through the hinges. Buying pre-hung, the door will come attached to a frame which will then be inserted within your existing door frame, which is a far more straightforward process.
Installation
Before you can begin to insulate the door, you must first attempt to align it within the existing doorframe. Obviously if you haven’t bough a pre-hung door this will be required to be done prior to any of the further installation steps. Aligning the door with the centre of the door frame, insert uniform blocks of wood a couple of milometers thick in order to effectively wedge it in place. This is known as shimming, and will enable the insulation around the door frame to be enacted, whilst also helping to determine whether the door is square against the doorframe.
Next use foam insulation, applied around the edges of the door frame and fixtures to save on electricity and help keep the cold outside. Finally, the door should be fitted following the drying of the insulation, and the fittings should be secured in place.
Sliding doors are more common in usage with patios and external doors, although can be used in other areas of the home. For stylish reasons, sliding doors can be installed between rooms and different areas of the house equally in place of regular stand alone doors. Of course, they require more room in order to install than traditional doors but can bring aesthetic benefits to the table. But with sliding doors, it’s important to check all of the features are in place in order to ensure the door is as functional as possible.
Choosing Your Sliding Doors
Before you can choose a particular sliding door you must first understand the positioning of the door within your home, namely whether or not you’re looking at an internal or external door, in order to determine what kind of fittings you will require and what your space requirements will be. Next, you want to ensure that the kind of door you choose is correctly weighted for your requirements – internal sliding doors should be lightweight enough to be moveable whilst outer doors should be somewhat more robust to protect from the heat and foreign invaders.
Sliding Door Handles and Fittings
The handles for your sliding door must be robust enough to carry the weight of your door, whilst also matching up with the remainder of your household fittings for design and style reasons. Likewise it is important that the handles are firmly fixed to the door in order to enable you to open and close the doors with ease without the handle coming off in your hand.
Few people consider that sliding doors require runners – however, this is a vital component for the slide mechanism to work, and something that must be catered to differently depending on the specifics of the particular unit you’re looking at. For example, an outer sliding door will require a heavy-duty runner located at the foot of the door in order to ensure it is effective at opening and shutting. However for an internal door, it’s probably best for the runner to be located above the door itself to avoid creating uneven floorspace when the door is opened.
Considerations for Sliding Doors
* weight – easy enough to open/heavy enough to keep out the elements?
* fixtures – robust enough to allow you to take the weight of the door?
* runners and location – are the runners in the right place and unlikely to cause problems?
Choosing external doors isn’t an easy process, and there are a wide range of factors to take into account to choose the right door for your home.
Security – How secure is the door likely to be against the threat of foreign intruders? Determine the thickness and solidity of the door, prior to committing to buy it. The door must be secure enough to hold off burglars and to protect your property, as one of the primary properties of your door.
Insulation – The insulation properties of external doors are an important factor in considering whether or not to select an exterior door. A poorly insulated door can end up costing a great deal in heating costs, whereas a more effectively insulated unit can help keep the home warm.
Locking – Does the door have an inbuilt lock, or does that have to be installed? Whilst this might make little difference for wooden doors, it is crucial in PVC doors and doors of other materials which can be harder to work with with little skills.
Weight – Tying in with security and insulation, the weight of the door is an important factor for consideration in selecting the door of your choice. Generally speaking, the heavier the door the better, in terms of blocking in heat, withstanding flames and protecting your property from
Fire Retardance – The door you choose must be fire retardant to enable the protection of your home from fire. Additionally, you want to make sure the door doesn’t conduct heat through the locks and handles which could pose a threat in the event of a fire.
