I am going to put new flooring into our den which entails putting down sleepers and subflooring over a concrete slab. Of course this will raise the floor level a minimum of a couple of inches which means the steel entry door needs to be trimmed. This door will not be permanent since our plans are to install French doors with sidelights, although it will probably have to do for at least a year or so until we get ready for that next stage since that's going to be a rather large, involved project.

Any tips on chopping this thing off (It's not something I'm doing this weekend, by the way, I'm lining up my summer projects .)? I thought I'd just put a steel cutting blade on my circular saw, cut through the metal skin on both sides, and then replace with a woodcutting blade to cut all the way through (assuming this is how this door is made---typical inexpensive 9-lite backdoor.) Slap a door sweep on it, put down a threshhold and call it done. Doable?

ETA: I swear I did a search, six different ways from Sunday, trying to find info on this and now I see there's almost a duplicate thread further down the page. Oh well . Feel free to add anything if you feel the need! Although looking at the other thread, if that's foam in there, I'd stick to my prior plan with the exception of finishing up with a hacksaw blade.

By the way, since this is going to be more or less temporary, I really don't care where the knob ends up. .

 

Rather than lowering the ship, raise the bridge. Do you have room enough to trim the header the amount you need? You will be doing this anyway when you install the new french doors. At least in the end you will have a door and frame you can sell at a garage sale rather than take to the dump because it is cut. Remove the door and frame, cut the header and reinstall the door and frame in the new opening.

 

That wall is actually one long header (an open air porch that was enclosed at some point in time,) but cutting out, re-shimming, re-plumbing, etc., etc., is out of the question. I'm not going to go through all that for a temporary fix, I'm afraid.

Besides we don't do garage sales.

 

How do you plan on installing your new french doors? If, after you build up your floors, you don't have room for the existing door, I fail to see how you will install new ones. But if you are dead set on cutting off the metal door the manner you describe is as good as it gets. Good luck.

 

I agree cutting the door is not the corect solution short term or long. I would notch the header and go up. If you don't you will be cuitting you new french doors. and every other door you want to put in. If was doing this for a customer I would cut the header. You said it was a covered porch before which leads me to think the the load is only the porch roof which notching the header a couple of inches should not affect the ablity of the header to suport such a small load.