Sorry for the length of this, but this will help my mental health.

We recently purchased a exterior swingset door. My husband measured the opening and gave them to the order dept at Home Depot.

Now the nightmare begins. When my husband contacted a part time handyman to do the installation with his assistance.

The first red flag was when the door was put in the opening the 2 doors didn't line up, the right was higher than the left. (they lined up before it was installed) The handy man said the manufacturer must have made the door incorrectly.

Then the handyman attempted to install the hardware. After 3 hours of banging and hammering he declared the latch to be defective. )We had to buy another one and my husband put it in himself)
i
Now for the big problem. The door is too small for the opening. The handyman didn't think this was a big problem, and told my husband to call a brick mason to come and rip out all the brick underneath the door and put new ones in. This seems like a ver drastic solution to me. Why would you destroy something that is ok and replace with brick that we will never match?

Now my husband believes ripping out the brick is the only solution because that's what the handyman said, and you can see I think it's a bad idea, so nothing has been done for 4 months to fix it and these really weird flying bugs have been coming into the house through the space at the bottom of the door and dive bomb me 20 time a day!!! SERENITY NOW!!!!

whew, ok, please tell me how to fix this. What should have been done in the first place? Can't some kind of filler be put in the space?? It's less than an inch wide and runs the entire length of the bottom of the door.

THANKS

 

There is (or wasn't) anything wrong with the doors, and probably not the latch. The problem is with the installer.

Yes, the doors will be smaller than the opening -- after the doors are PROPERLY installed, you use trim to cover that gap.

You say the 2 doors didn't line up -- this is a set of french doors? It's the installers job to shim the jambs so that they DO line up.

An opening UNDER the doors?? How? Why? the door's threshold should be sitting fully on the slab or subfloor of the house, and should have be caulked between the floor and the bottom of the threshold. The only openings should be the gap on each side of the jambs, and one above the header of the door jamb. That's where the trim comes in.

 

http://us.f2.yahoofs.com/users/4030f...ohPMAB1CC2v0LI





I don't understand what went wrong enough to explain it properly
so here are photos.



See the bricks on the outside that the guy wants us to rip out?? I don't understand destroying these when they are ok.

It's a swingset door, like french doors but only one side opens. (but ours won't open easily now)

So do we have to have the whole thing removed and reinstalled?


See the bugs coming in??

 

I don't know about the pictures. I tried 3 times to go to them, and it locked my computer up all 3 times. If you can put them on a site like photobucket, angelfire, etc. and i can get to them without this problem, or if somebody (Andy, Mike, etc.) can e-mail them to me ... or just e-mail them to me directly!

duckadams@sbcglobal.net.

 

sounds like there was definitely a problem with the installation. Once you remove the old door you should have a relatively flat surface on the floor to place the new door on.

You usually put down a few lines of caulk on the floor and stand the new door up in the opening. You would then check for square, level, etc all around the door. Put shims around the door and on the top. Attach the new door, through the shims, into the house framing. After its fully attached you add your door trim on the sides and top to pretty everything up.

That's about it.

 

call a competent door installer.

From the information you have posted, I don't believe the handyman has the knowledge or experience which is necessary to "answer the call" on your door installation nor "make the call" of the proposed solution of "ripping the brick out"



stuff some rolled up screen into the opening until a fix is found....

 

Thanks everyone.

I'm looking for a bonifide carpenter

 

The door came with plenty of temporary stiffening to keep it all plumb and square. If that stuff was removed before shimming the door into it's final resting place that was a mistake.

So....who removed the temporary bracing?