Door Replacement

With the same published rule we apply to windows: when more than half the structural material is compromised — rot through the frame and sill, joinery failed throughout, a slab delaminated past re-gluing — replacement is the honest call, because rebuilding the majority of a door costs more than building one. Below that line, repair wins, usually by a wide margin. The important part is who runs the test. A door showroom's answer to every symptom is a new door, because that's the product on the truck; our revenue runs the other way — every door we replace is a door we didn't repair — so when we say "replace," the conclusion fought uphill against our own business model to get to you. The assessment that produces the verdict is free, happens within 1–2 days, and ends with both numbers in writing: the repair scope line by line, and the replacement figure beside it. You decide with the facts in hand.

Because "replacing a door" almost never means just the door. The quoted project typically includes the slab, a new frame and threshold, demolition of the old unit, correcting whatever the tear-out reveals in the surrounding framing, new interior and exterior trim, flashing and sealing, hardware, finishing, and disposal — plus sidelites and transoms if the entry has them, which multiply both glass and labor. Premium materials push it further: a solid wood or high-end fiberglass entry system is a four-figure item before anyone picks up a tool. None of this is dishonest pricing; a full entry replacement genuinely is that much work. The dishonesty, when it happens, is upstream — prescribing that project to a door whose actual failure is a worn threshold or a rotted frame corner that a targeted repair would fix for roughly 80% less. That prescription gap is the entire reason this page leads with the decision framework instead of a product catalog.

Yes — slab-only replacement is one of the trade's best-kept economies, and we recommend it whenever the frame is healthy. The frame, threshold, trim, and flashing stay; a new slab is fitted to the opening: hinges mortised to match or re-set cleanly, lockset bored to position, edges beveled and sealed, gaps balanced so the door closes on an even reveal. It's meaningfully less than a full-unit project because it skips demolition, framing, trim, and most of the finishing. Two honest caveats. First, the frame must actually be square and sound — hanging a new slab in a racked or rotted frame builds a problem into the repair, which is why we assess the frame before quoting the slab. Second, an out-of-square opening can often be corrected first (that's repair work) and then receive its new slab. If the old slab is worth keeping at all, remember that repair remains on the table: solid doors take repair beautifully — see door repair — and pre-war doors are usually worth the effort on material quality alone.

You've met the problem replication solves. Older homes — pre-war houses in Montclair, Westfield, and across northern NJ — were built with doors sized and styled to the house, not to a distributor's warehouse: taller openings, non-standard widths, panel layouts and moldings no catalog carries. The industry's workaround is ugly: reframe the opening smaller to fit a stock door, which costs real money and permanently changes the face of the house. Our alternative is building the door to the opening — custom replication, milled to match the original's dimensions, panel pattern, and profiles, using the same shop craft as our window replication work. For historic homes it's often paired with historic door restoration: restore the original if it survives, replicate it faithfully if it doesn't. A replicated door costs more than a stock slab and dramatically less than reframing plus a premium entry system — and it's the only option on the list that leaves the house looking like itself.

We install like a company that repairs failed installations for a living — because we are one. The rot we rebuild at door frames traces overwhelmingly to installation-day shortcuts: no sill pan under the threshold, flashing lapped backwards or skipped, gaps foamed for insulation but never sealed against water, thresholds set unsupported so they flex and open joints. Our installs answer each of those specifically: pan flashing under the threshold with a back dam, shingle-lapped flashing at the sides and head, a supported and sealed threshold, air-sealing inside, drainage outside, and hardware aligned so the door latches and seals without persuasion. The new unit's manufacturer covers the door; our 5-year workmanship warranty covers the workmanship that determines whether the wall around it stays dry — the part no product warranty touches. Crew fully insured, photos answered the same day, most projects complete within 1–2 weeks of the unit arriving, Mon–Fri 8:00 AM – 6:00 PM.