Patio Doors

So we are starting to look for patio doors and have a few questions for those of you that may have gone through this already. We were hoping to keep the price down by buying them for Home Depot or Lowes and installing them ourselves. I like hinged doors as opposed to sliders and wood....but to order wood ones (like Andersons) are way too expensive. There are two instock at Lowes that I am considering both steel and energy star, one has Low E glass. The one without Low E comes in a 60 inch which is a smaller size that we would prefer but I hear you should have Low E (where the doors will be not much sun hits so I am thinking maybe it is not such a big deal).

They seem relatively cheap and I am wondering if we are making a mistake buying something cheaper and not investing in ordering the expensive models. Will the room be freezing come winter time because these doors are lower end and will not have enough insulation?? I hate that they seem "plasticy" but I am hoping I will not notice once they are painted and up.

Any thoughts?

Re: Patio Doors

our house has two builder grade sliders in our great room. they are so drafty we have to put the shrink wrap plastic on them in the winter.
We are going to replace them but I'm not going cheap this time, we'll wait till we can afford to buy the Andersens. With heating costs they way they are it doesn't make sense to go with something that doesn't have a good energy rating.

Re: Patio Doors

Lowes is excellent to buy from. We actually went with the Pella sliders that have the grid trim on the inside of the glass. We paid $459 and $80 to deliver them. We installed them ourselves
Scott

Re: Patio Doors

Are patio doors very hard to install yourself?

Re: Patio Doors

Well where our doors were used to be a window - So my father in law, brother in law, my neighbor and I measured the whole - Demo'd the area where the doors were going to be - Placed the doors in and did all the rest of the work to get the doors attached to the house and even. I would say it took a full 6 to 8 hours to complete. This was two days worth. It was a lot of wrk, but we saved a lot of money doing it ourselves.

Scott

Re: Patio Doors

Thanks!

Sounds like something similar we want to do. Right now we have a regular door going to the backyard and there is a window next to it so we want to knock the door and the window and install a patio sliding door. My brother plans to help us install it, so with his help it should go smooth.

In the picture below, it's the window and door to the right that we want to remove and then add patio doors there. The two walls from the kitchen area will be knocked too so this will all be one room.

Image Attachment(s):

Re: Patio Doors

Sounds like a fun project you are going to have - Be prepared to take many trips to the dump, or rent a dumpster. What a mess we had from doing this project - but in the end it is 100% worth it

Image Attachment(s):

Re: Patio Doors

More from outside and in - the window in the first picture is the one we removed and that is where the sliders are now - it used to be the master bedroom

Image Attachment(s):

Message edited 4/26/2006 7:14:00 AM.

Re: Patio Doors

WOW it looks AWESOME!! Question.....we are doing the same thing, putting the door where a window used to be. We were told we may need to put an additional header piece into the wall to stabilize the wall and ceiling....did you do this?

Re: Patio Doors

Scott another question for ya...we were thinking about getting those Pella doors too, but they are only instock in 72".....the cheaper ones come in a 60". I am curious how big your wall and room is where the doors are...when I look at the picture they seem the perfect size and I thought they would be to overwhelming in our room. Our dining room is 12X13.
THANKS!

Re: Patio Doors

The room was 12X12 and the doors were 6 feet across I believe.

I dont remember if we put a header in but I think we may of.

I know we had to do the header when we took the wall out between the living room and the dining room.

This was the last owners master bedroom. We also closed up the closet that was to the right of the Window that was removed.

Scott

Re: Patio Doors

Thanks for the info!!!

Re: Patio Doors

sure anytime