New Glidin’ Slidin’ Glass Door
I just have to start this post out by saying that only my dear, sweet, loving husband, Pavlo, would be as excited about a new sliding glass door as a kid on Christmas morning. No seriously, we drove out to the house the day after he had installed the new door and we had barely stepped in the house when Pavlo marched directly over to the door and told me with a big ol’ smile, “Go ahead, open it! It glides so nicely!” I’m fairly confident I didn’t even have half the look of joy and thrill on my face when I told him I was pregnant with either of our children. And as you can imagine, we were pretty darn excited about having our little munchkins!
Now, to be fair, I have to admit that the door did indeed “glide so nicely,” especially considering the old one took some serious tugging to open and close. I didn’t have nearly Pavlo’s level of excitement though. (Sorry, honey!) That being said, I did find the new Anderson door to be extremely solid and beautiful aesthetically.
The door that was previously in the kitchen was in decent condition but it wasn’t exactly the newest door and since we were putting so much time, money and effort into the kitchen renovation, we figured we’d upgrade the door too. We knew the old door would have worked just fine with a little paint, WD-40 and new hardware. However, it was what I would merely call functional. So, since we had some wiggle room in the house’s window budget we agreed that if we found a nice door for the right price then we’d jump on it. Well, as luck would have it we found a great deal on Craigslist for an Anderson (yes, an amazing Anderson) door.
I honestly need to dedicate a whole post (or two, or three) on how we’ve used Craigslist to buy and sell so many items. Seriously, Mr.Craig has allowed us to save so much moolah on items as well as make a few bucks on others! This sliding glass door was one of those great Craigslist finds. The original owner had purchased it, decided instead to go with French doors, so never installed it (who can blame him, French doors are amazing!?) The MSRP for these doors is about $2000 on average and we paid $800. Like I said earlier, this door wasn’t originally in our kitchen renovation plan but after finding an Anderson door (just can’t help but continue to mention it’s an Anderson) for that kind of price, the new door quickly became part of our reno plans!
Many may consider this higher-end door to be a waste of money since we could have replaced our old door with the exact same brand, just a newer model, for less. However, for our house and neighborhood it’s actually worth it. I wouldn’t have said the same for our previous house. We also justified splurging on a higher-end door since we wouldn’t be paying for install. Ahh, the advantages of a handy husband!
Before I go any further I’m sure some of you may be wondering why we didn’t go with French doors since I even admitted above that they’re amazing. Well, we actually had that as a first choice but then nixed it when we realized our space for the door to swing either way would just be too tight. We would either lose valuable deck space (it’s not going to be a big deck as it is) or the area behind the kitchen’s peninsula would become extremely cramped. Hence the choice of a new sliding door.
Okay, enough jibber jabber, now for the pictures!
Here are pictures of our old door:
And here is the new door installed:
It clearly still needs some trim and paint, but it really looks (and yes glides) wonderful(ly).
Unfortunately Pavlo was stuck doing this job on his own so I have very few pictures of each individual step. He did the best he could so that I could give a step-by-step “how-to” guide on how to replace a sliding glass door given that several people have been interested in more than just the before and after of projects. Maybe some day we’ll tackle another sliding glass door installation, until then I leave you with these very very very basic instructions:
#1- Old door gets taken out. The 2 sliding panels get removed first followed by removing the framing.
#2- The sill to the sliding door was rotting so Pavlo had to replace it with a new 2×4. This is the time to check for any damage to the main structure of the opening. In our case we did in fact have to make this one repair so it was actually a good thing we decided to replace the door.
#3- New base flashing gets installed. This is important for preventing water damage to the house. There are two parts to the base flashing. The white flashing seen below is required because we’re building a deck and it diverts water away from the house.
The blue flashing in the photo below is important because if water happens to get behind the actual door panels (think wind-driven rain) then it helps drain it back outside.
#4- Constructed the new frame. Sorry, we don’t have pics of the frame being constructed or after being constructed. Good news though, all frames come with instructions! 🙂
5.) Installed the new frame. Also don’t have pictures of the frame installed alone. More good news, most frames also come with instructions on how to install them into the opening!
6.)Installed the new sliding panels.
7.) Added the hardware.
Normally the next step would be adding the new trim, but that actually hasn’t been done yet. Soon though, soon!
Thanks for sharing the pictures. I want to have my own patio sliding glass doors. Aside from they are in the fashion these days, a lot of people have one and the rest want to own one. Also they actually improve the ambiance of the room as well as the exterior of your home.