I have built a deck adjacent to my kitchen/dining room. The room has some double windows in the dining room area that I wish to turn into double doors for entry to the deck. The house is about 30 years old and is brick veneer. There is no brick above the window as it terminates just below the eave. If I merely remove the remaining brick down the the deck level, my outside rough opening will be 5'10". Since I'm about at the limit of my budget, I'd like to do this job myself and avoid custom ordering doors. Most of the french doors I've seen offered at places like Lowe's and Home depot are 6 feet wide. Should I remove the window and make a rough opening then try to find a door to fit it or should I buy a door and make my opening to fit it? Every resource I've reviewed assumes that one is replacing one door with another and already has the replacement on hand before work is started. Thanks, Ehull

After replacing most of our regular windows ourselves we figured that we could splurge and replace our 5'x5' living room window with a garden window, and have it be maybe slightly more complicated, but nothing too out of the ordinary. So we ordered a garden window from Milgard and it seems a nice enough unit structurally and appearance-wise. However, the installation instructions consist of the back of the window sticker, which shows a cut away view of the window, and refers to a generic window installation document that does not explain how to install this. The manufacturer's web site could be kindly described as "unhelpful". Here are the differences from (what I consider) a normal window. - The nailing fin is a solid 1 1/2" piece of metal all the way around the window instead of being slotted vinyl. There are no holes in the fin anywhere. - There are two heavy duty ~7 pound metal bars, about 1" square by 5' long, with a deep groove running down the length (it could fit onto part of the fin, but doesn't seem designed for it). There are no holes in these bars, although there is a small U shaped cut out on each end. The cut out goes to the edge, so you would not be able to use that to bolt it to the house. - There are two angle iron brackets, surprisingly with holes in them. The holes are relatively small (I was expecting lag screw size, but these can just fit an average sized nail). Also there are no corresponding holes in the bottom of the unit to attach these to. - The fin is on the edge, depthwise, of the window, not in the middle. This means that no part of the window can sit in the rough opening. The window also is not designed to fit from the inside of the house. I will call the manufacturer tomorrow, but I would be surprised if they were significantly more helpful than their instructions :rolleyes: . Please let me know if you have any suggestions about how this is intended to attach to the house. Thanks! (edit, corrected nailing fin size)