Exterior Doors: Replacement and Maintenance

Exterior doors are an integral part of our home - not only are they the way we gain entry into our home, they separate our homes interior from the elements keeping comfortable and safe. The front door is possibly the most important exterior door in your home, as it sets people's first impressions of the house, also known as curb appeal.

There are many factors to consider when you want to pick the right exterior doors for your home.

Exterior doors should be replaced with a pre-hung door from the manufacturer, to make sure that the door fits snugly inside its frame. When installing a door, it must be leveled in 3 different dimensions to swing open and close and to lock properly. Door installation also needs a lot of skill in using levels and shimming the door inside its rough opening.

The cost in installing a basic door with no sidelights (vertical panels that can be included to the left/right/both sides of a door) or transom (glass above a door or window) is the same regardless of the type of material the door is made from.

Safer Exterior Doors

Safety is an important feature of exterior doors. Although some might feel that "a steel door offers the strongest barrier against intruders", this is not entirely true. A door is only as strong as it's weakest part and when someone breaks into a home, the door jamb usually fails because it is always made of wood. Basically, the screws holding the lock strike plate are compromised, so you need to add a deadbolt lock and/or upgrade to a durable or high-security strike plate with 3 to 4 inch screws to make sure that the door is secured into the rough framing.

Maintaining Exterior Doors

Every exterior door consists of some wood where you get a snug fit. There is a thin strip of wood about a quarter of an inch that wraps the 4 sides (top, bottom, left and right) of a door that must be painted to shield them from bulging when they get wet and/or wood rot. When you want to learn about exterior doors online, make sure you land in trustworthy sites with great information about homes. Some sites online always provide more in-depth information than other sites that talks fiction - based ideas about homes. Searching for the best sites for home maintenance online is easy, you just have to make sure that the author or the admin of the site earned recognition of her line of work.

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