Patio Doors

We are in the process of remodeling our home. We have two decks on our home, a small one off of our dining room area and also a raised deck off of our upper level master bedroom. Our plans include expanding the deck off of the dining room area to wrap around the front of the house. We know that we want to invest in quality patio doors leading from the dining area to the deck. We will use this deck to grill and to eat out of doors when the weather permits. Due to this the patio doors will be used often so we want them to be easy to open and close. The doors also will be facing the lakeside of our home, which is on the north side, so we need to make sure that the doors are energy efficient to stop the cold during the winter months.

We began looking at patio doors at a local home improvement store. They had several doors available. We had decided that we did not want sliding doors. We get a great deal of snow and ice during the winter and we have experienced sliding glass doors in the past. Often times you cannot access the doors during the winter months because snow and ice build up on the tracks that the doors slide on. We are planning a deck fire area so we want to be able to use the patio doors during the winter months. The home improvement store did have two choices for doors that swing open. They are more expensive than the slide doors, but we feel that the expense is worth the higher quality that we are going to have. One style of door also features a swinging screen door. This ran several hundred dollars more than the one that had a sliding screen. I felt that having a sliding screen door defeated the purpose of having a swinging glass door. The sales person explained that during the winter months we could remove the screen and store it. This would allow for a clearer view during the winter. We decided on the swinging hinged type doors for both the upper and lower decks.

We brought home the patio doors and stored them in the garage so that they would be available for the contractor. My husband called me at work the next day to report that the doors did not fit the opening that the contractor had left for the patio doors. I did not see that this was going to be a huge issue. We did not even ask about the size of the doors because the sales clerk did not indicate that there was more than one size. Changing the size of the opening is taking extra time, but we should have our remodeling project completed soon.