New and Replacement Door Installation in Tucson

Whether you need a new door or replacement doors, interior or exterior doors, slab, pre-hung or sliding glass doors for your Tucson home, Hammer and Nail Home Repair is ready, able and willing to help you.

There are all kinds of reasons people call us for help with their doors. Sometimes people want all their interior doors replaced for a new look, and sometimes it's just a single door that's been damaged due to someone kicking it or whatever. Regardless of the reason, there are several ways to go about replacing doors, depending on what you're looking for.

For example, you could get a slab door which is just the door itself, with no frame. Or if the frame is broken then you can get a pre-hung, so it’s just one piece and then you put that in place. It just depends on the situation.

These options are available regardless of whether you're considering an interior door or a front door. More often than not, especially with front doors, the pre-hung option is a better way to go (though it does depend on the house).

For example, on some older, well built brick homes that we have here in Tucson, the inside is all plaster, which can be a big job to deal with if you're changing out the whole door frame. In that case, getting a slab door and simply cutting it down to fit properly may be a better way to go.

Cost of New Doors

When it comes to the price of a new door, whether interior or exterior, like so many things, you have a wide range of prices based on quality and design.

For an external entry door for example, you could go to Home Depot and get a Jeld-Wen [http://www.jeld-wen.com] steel entry door for around $150 which is perfectly fine. We install these kinds of doors all the time and just put one in our own condo recently. While the prices start at around $150, they can easily climb to thousands of dollars. In fact, you could get a custom steel or wood door made that could cost you $3,000 or more. There's really no top-end price when it comes to custom work.

Regardless of the price you pay for your door, the process of getting them installed is still the same (other than needing to wait on a custom door to get made and delivered compared to simply buying an "off the shelf" door that you can pick up today).

Better quality doors do tend to be a bit easier to install because they have things like adjustable hinges that you might not find on the very cheapest doors, but still, when someone knows what they're doing, hanging a decent $250 door shouldn't be an issue at all.

Door and Window Installation - Experience Matters

And after working as a door and window specialist for over 6 years, hanging in the neighborhood of 2,000 to 3,000 or more doors and installing over 10,000 windows, you can rest assured I'll put your door in correctly.

With all that experience, I can also tell you that part of the challenge of hanging doors correctly is based on the house itself - how level is the foundation and how square are the walls and door frames?

When you have an older house like you find here in Tucson, it's usually built better. So the older brick houses, say from the 1950’s and '60’s and maybe even the '70’s, the construction was so much better compared to a house that is stick and stucco from these days, where things are often just a bit off. With stucco, the house is inclined to maybe move a little bit more, whereas a block house isn't going to move as much. Or the house could have a bad foundation so it will twist the foundation a little bit. When that happens, all the windows and doors will be off, making things more challenging.

But at Hammer & Nail, we're good at handling these kinds of challenges, because we do it all the time. We're able to make adjustments; it's all how you shim it and screw it in to make sure that everything hangs true and plumb, so everything swings normally and naturally.

For example, one of the 'tricks of the trade' for complicated doors is to make sure you have two people working on it rather than trying to do it with just one person. That way you can have one person on the inside holding the door in place while the other manipulates things while keeping an eye on a level to make sure it's just right.

One thing to keep in mind when doing this is that when you initially get it hanging square, it may LOOK like it's a little cock-eyed compared to the house. But once you finish up and put the trim on it, everything looks, and works, just fine.

So even though you can find most window companies and carpenters will offer to hang doors, if the person doing it doesn't have a lot of experience, and your situation is something other than a text-book situation, you may find they have a few issues getting things done right, especially for a less expensive door. Again, this is where my many years of being a door and window specialist really comes in handy.

Another benefit of replacing older doors that weren't made so well is the added insulation you'll get. Not only against the heat and cold, but against sound. It's amazing how much sound dampening a good door can handle. For people who live near a busy road, or in the flight path near Davis Monthan AFB, anything to help quiet things down can be a huge benefit.

FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions about Door Installation and Replacement