All Things Renovation Podcast S3E29 Doors

Braden Stevenson of North Shore Door discusses the importance of understanding the different options and considerations when choosing and ordering doors. He explains the terminology and concepts such as door handing, interior and exterior door types, rough openings, and jam thickness. The episode focuses on educating customers about these details to ensure they select the right doors for their application. Welcome to the show, everyone. With me again today is Braden Stevenson of North Shore Door. He and I chatted about windows a few episodes ago, so be sure to head back there and check that one out if you're interested in windows, but today we're going to get into doors. Braden is the general manager of North Shore Door, and it is a door and window manufacturing company who has been proudly serving the lower mainland with premium products for over a decade. He spends most of his daily role in sales and strategic growth of the company, but he also oversees operations in various departments. He truly enjoys educating his customers so that they can enjoy the product for years to come, and I can fully attest to this. We've had a few clients go over that way, and they're very happy with the service and the education they receive. And while not working at North Shore Door, Braden can be found spending time with his family, playing hockey and camping, and when the sun is out, you may even catch him on the golf course. So, welcome to the show again. Thanks for having me on again, Brandy. I look forward to discussing exterior doors, interior doors, and door hardware. Excellent. So, so many of us take for granted our doors. I mean, you just expect them to open and close and lock when you need them to, but there are so many little small decisions that we need to make when choosing a door, and front doors are especially, I guess, full of angst for a lot of people, because you want to make the best first impression you can from the street. So, let's jump into everything that we would need to consider around choosing and ordering doors, and I figure we can just call this kind of like a Doors 101 kind of sort of information session here. So, I think there's some terminology that people need to understand, so maybe run us through some of those things. I'm thinking like the handing and all that kind of stuff. Sure. Yeah, you kind of hit the nail on the head. One thing that's interesting about the door and window business, particularly the door business, is a lot of people do take the doors for granted. They open, they close, they provide privacy, they provide energy efficiency for the home on an exterior door. But the one thing that I've noticed is every time we bring a new member onto our team or have a client in the showroom, the level of knowledge that is required to properly order a door that fits your application, your style, your taste, can be very challenging, and there's just so many different options and things to consider. So, yeah, definitely a lot to talk about and a lot more complicated than one may think. So, yeah. So, your question about door handing. So, if we start with interior doors, which is the easier one, interior doors essentially swing. So, your bedroom doors, bathroom doors, etc. You've got closet doors, which oftentimes swing out of the closet. You've got bypass doors, which usually are for closet doors, and those will essentially bypass each other to give out access to half the closet essentially at any time. And then you've also got pocket doors. So, pocket doors are good usually for a bathroom application where it's a small bathroom or it's a narrow hallway, and it just gives people that ability to close off that room without having to have that extra space to swing the door. So, those are the different types of interior doors. But if we talk about door handing, essentially, you've got a door swings left and it swings right. So, they are reversible. So, you just need to – essentially, the way we look at it is when you push the door away from you, the handle will be on the right-hand side, hinges on the left. You'll push the door into the left, and a right-hand door, you push it into the right. So, that sort of is a broad overview of interior doors. And then now if we move into the exterior door side of things, there are similar doors for exterior. There's swing doors. There's the sliding doors, which would be like a sliding patio door. We covered that a little bit in the previous episode. Yeah, and there actually, surprisingly, is pocket doors for exterior as well, where you can open up the door and it can pocket into the wall. Yeah, so those are kind of the versions of exterior doors. And then, obviously, handing – the difficult part with exterior doors, to make it a little trickier, is they can swing in and out of the house. So, doors that swing into the house, we would consider those in-swing doors. So, those essentially will swing into the – if you're standing outside, so viewed from the exterior, the door, if it swings into the left, so handles on the right, hinges on the left, swings into the room to the left, that's a left-hand in-swing. If a door is standing on the exterior, again, handle on the left, hinges on the right, swings into the right, that is a right-hand in-swing. And then, just to throw a curveball, because we all love those, half the industry views the out-swing doors, so doors that swing out of the building. They consider those to be left-hand – sorry, standing outside, they view from the – they view everything from the outside. So, essentially, if you're standing outside, if you pull the door with the handle on the right, hinges on the left, you pull it out, that's a left-hand out-swing. And then, obviously, the opposite on the other side. We look at out-swing doors from the inside, so we would call a door when we were standing inside, we would push it out to the right, so handle on the left, hinge on the right, push it out to the right, so that would be a right-hand out-swing. And, obviously, the same for the left-hand door. So, it does become complicated. We usually put little pictures on our quotes so that it's clear, designating the swing of the door. But, obviously, when you're selecting your hardware and you're shopping for doors, it's just something to be aware of that handings can be different. And if it's written down, just to make sure that you do clarify that you have selected the correct handing because it can oftentimes be a big, big issue, especially if it swings into the wrong way or swings towards a barbecue or towards the toilet and you can't make it work. So, it's just definitely something to be aware of. Yeah, definitely. What are some of the other sort of terminologies or things that we have to consider and maybe some terms that people wouldn't quite understand? I mean, obviously, we know the door handle and we know the hinges. Now, we've talked about the handing. I think there's a little bit around what people call the RO or the rough openings, and that's also something that oftentimes when you're ordering a door, a door company is going to ask you, what is your opening size? And there's some standards that go with the opening sizes that are industry known. They're just sort of things that are expected as far as some sizing goes, especially the height of the door. Maybe run us through a little bit of that. Absolutely, yeah. So, some things when we're going through the ordering process, one thing that does come to mind is the term a light. So, that's L-I-T-E. Yes. So, a light in the door business is basically a piece of glass. So, when we consider a one light, it's basically a door with one big piece of glass. So, that's interesting. Obviously, RO net frame is two ways to look at it. So, that's a very important thing when ordering a door is how big a door do you need? So, rough opening is obviously stud to stud, all four sides. So, that's how big the rough opening is. And then you want the door to be usually half inch smaller all the way around, quarter to half inch, depending. And then another way to order a door is by net frame. So, that would basically be outside jam, bottom of sills, the top of header jam. So, some people like to order by net frame so they know exactly what the door will come. So, they have the tolerances themselves. The other things, another big one is the jam thickness. So, depending on how thick your walls are, if you've got what kind of outside siding you've got. And what age your house is, because back in the day, we used to frame with two by four, like through two by four, two inches by four inches, and then lumber got downsized, still calling two by four, but it's actually like three and a half or whatever. And then we added all of our siding and everything on there. Now, because of all of our, you know, climate control and insulation requirements and all that kind of stuff to get our envelopes to be able to function better, now we're framing with two by sixes or two by eights. And if we get into passive house sort of level of build, then all of that changes again. So, that is definitely something that's important. But I just wanted to roll back just on one thing so that people understand. The jam is the piece of wood or the pieces of wood that sort of go around the perimeter of your door that allow the hinges to get screwed in and your deadbolt and everything on the other side to function as it does. And you can get doors where it's called a pre-hung, which means that you have a jam and a door and they come together as one piece. Or if you're just replacing a door, you can just replace the door itself and not the jam. I just wanted to roll back because some people don't know what the jam is. The feather term that we have in the industry, which is a pre-hung or just a single door. So, anyway, I just wanted to roll back into that. So, yeah. So, where were we? We were talking about the opening sizes. So, yeah. So, that's a huge requirement for you guys to be able to get, you know, provide a door to somebody. We need to know how big it is. And of course, you can custom make anything. But there are some, you know, industry standards, like a 6'8 height is usually the standard for a door. You can go taller and you can go shorter, but 6'8 is an industry standard, correct? Yeah, 6'8 standard. We're starting to see a lot more houses put seven O doors, which would be 84 inches, as well as eight foot doors, which would be 96. So, people are trying it with ceilings becoming nine and ten feet being more common in new builds. People are starting to maximize the door size to get more light into the home. Also, just proportionately make it look right. And that's exactly right. Yeah. And what about the width? You know, they come in increments generally, as far as my understanding is. Is that sort of your thought as well? Absolutely, yeah. So, the interior doors will come sort of 18 and then two inches. So, every even number all the way up to 36 inches increments. And then the other thing to consider is the thickness of the door. So, it will be inch and three-eighths and inch and three-quarters thick. Yeah. And then exterior doors are usually inch and three-quarters, interior doors inch and three-eighths. And then exterior doors, again, it makes it a little bit interesting. Wood doors, we typically would order 36 by 80 would be the most common. But then we also have up to sort of 42 inches in width. And then we'll go down to usually 30 inches in width is kind of the smallest exterior door that we would do. Where it gets interesting is on fiberglass doors. Because fiberglass doors are manufactured what we would consider undersized. So, they come a quarter inch less in width and one inch less in height. Really? So, yeah. Don't actually know the reason. Been through a few of the factories and they can't really say either. I know that depending on where the doors are distributed and shipped throughout the United States and Canada, there are different. Some people use 79 and a half, some 79 and a quarter. So, there's not really a rhyme or reason necessarily. Somebody probably had a bay door that they needed to get them through and they needed to shrink them just slightly to be able to get it through. It's kind of like one of those cooking style recipes that your grandma did this or that or your mom and they put it in this particular pan. And you don't know why, but it's just because that piece of meat happened to fit in there better and that's why we use that pan. And there was no rhyme or reason to it. It just was some random thing that made it seem like it was the right thing to do. Now, with exterior doors, obviously, we talked about wood and fiberglass. And you could also get other types of materials like there's steel and so forth. And, of course, with the fiberglass or what have you, we would have those be insulated, correct? Yeah. So, with steel and fiberglass doors, they are filled with polyurethane foam core. So, basically, you've got the door skin, you've got the polyurethane foam, and then you've got the other door skin. And that basically gives it its energy efficiency U-value to basically label and to meet the energy requirements of the building code today. And then also, sorry, I was going to say, and then also with that, depending on what door you're using and what application, sometimes we need to have a fire rated door. And that sort of is a whole other sort of topic of conversation, I think. But, you know, there's just another like, there's always something else that, you know, sort of tweaks the conversation here and there. So, if for some reason someone's listening and someone told them they need to have a fire rated door for some reason, then, you know, that adds another level of something that needs to be having like a little sticker stamp on it saying that it is actually fire rated. So, you know, oftentimes we need those for utility rooms where there's multi-family or multi-spaces in a home. So, just for people listening, that's another little bit of a component there. With the interior doors, let's go over the hollow core versus solid core and why we would choose one over another. Yeah, no, great question. So, based on the type of door that you choose, there may be an option to upgrade or change to solid core. Hollow core is normally the standard option, but we sell mostly solid core product. And the reason being is it is slightly more money, but we believe that the benefit that you receive from the solid core door outweighs the additional cost. What it basically provides is substantially greater sound transmission, reducing the sound transmission. In addition, it also gives that kind of rich feel on the door. When you sometimes slam a hollow core door, it catches the wind or the draft in the house and sort of just slowly closes. Whereas solid core door, if you give it a little push, it does close with some emphasis. So, definitely a nice upgrade. If people are looking, one thing I like to say is sometimes people see the price of the solid core option. So, oftentimes, if the budget is conscious on looking for different ways to save, I oftentimes suggest that people use solid core for the bathrooms and bedrooms, laundry room, that sort of idea. And then on closets, the office, different rooms that maybe sound isn't as important to look at a hollow core option. And that can definitely level up the budget. Yeah, no, I follow that same practice. You know, because if you're sleeping and you're down the hall and someone walks by or whatever, just that little bit of extra sound dampening is really helpful. And then same thing in the bathroom, like, especially if it's close by, more of a common area, you don't necessarily want to have everybody hearing what's going on in there. So, and then, of course, you know, even with the shower or whatever, if it's going to make some noise and maybe disrupt somebody whose door or bedroom is right across the hall or something like that, it's always nice to be able to have a little bit of sound dampening for sure. So, the other thing I wanted to sort of touch on with both interior and exterior doors is that you have all kinds of door types. And what I mean by that is, like, what they look like. So, you know, to my understanding, like, the most common ones I see, especially inside, are, you know, just a slab or like a flat door all together. And then we get into some panel versions. And depending on what room you're in, sometimes it's like, you know, depending on what room you're in, sometimes people do want to have a little bit of a light or a glass sort of situation, maybe for a pantry door or, you know, something along those lines. So, maybe you'd sort of just walk us through a little bit around what each of those sort of bring into the conversation. Absolutely. So, door styles for interior are basically, like you said, a flat panel. So, flush. We have the shaker doors, which would be sort of, they're considered style rail. So, oftentimes your cabinets are style rail construction. So, it's very 90 degree, very square looking with one to sort of five panel configuration. Next, we've got our molded panels, which are kind of, I would say, majority of the past. A lot of renovations, we replaced molded panel doors. So, that would be your six panel, your arch top, two panel. How about that builder's special door, right? Builder's special door. Very popular is the molded panel doors. And then, we now have a new door that's kind of been in the market for a few years now, but it's called the molded shaker. So, it essentially looks like a shaker door, but it's a molded panel door. So, you don't have the 90 degree where the styles meet the panel. You don't have the 90 degree, but you have about a 45 and it's part of a heritage collection. And those come in, again, the same sort of panel configurations and come in, again, the solid and the hollow. And like you said, French doors with glass, you can get custom glass put in. So, definitely lots of options on the interior doors. Yeah. So, you mentioned something there with putting glass in, say, like a French door or whatever. And of course, we can get just a clear glass, we can get a frosted, we can get a leaded, we can even get stained glass. There's all kinds of glass options that you could consider. So, you're not just limited to just a single pane of glass, which is kind of nice for people to consider, right? Now, exterior doors. Oh, my goodness. They go from nothing to super fancy and really modern with the different narrow pieces of glass with wood in between, which lots of people are really keen on these days. And maybe some even bits of metal trim and decoration and all that kind of stuff in there. It just seems like you almost just have to go to a showroom and look at all of the options as well as checking things out online and so forth. It's not like there's only 10 sort of front door styles to choose from anymore, is there? It's almost like your imagination is as far as you could go. Yeah, absolutely. It's interesting to sort of touch on the exterior door options. Again, quickly is sort of your steel, your fiberglass and your wood. When you're looking at steel doors, the options are relatively limited. They kind of match your interior molded panel doors. Fiberglass is sort of stepping out with a smooth fiberglass option, so it's basically paintable. And now they've got quite the technology where they're starting to develop wood grain fiberglass doors. So a wood grain door essentially can be stained and to the naked eye or from a distance, you can't really tell the difference between a fiberglass door and a wood door. Obviously, when you're close up or you're touching it, the natural beauty of the wood products is not achievable. Today, at least, with a fiberglass door. But when you bring up door style, you're absolutely right. We touched on the light earlier on with wood doors and even with fiberglass doors and steel doors. The level of options, you can basically select your door and then you can select the number of glass lights and then you can select the type of glass that you put in there. So the options are definitely endless to some point. Yeah, for sure. I think the other thing here to mention, too, is when we're talking options, because you just touched on the finish. If we're having a door that we say we want it painted or it's a natural wood or something facing out towards the street to bring it in harmony with what our facade is, with our siding and so forth. It does not necessarily need to be the same on the inside. I know some of our clients have done, well, one of them in the past recently, even really bright blue door on the outside, beautiful color, custom color. And then on the inside, it was white because the inside of their house was white and they didn't want to see the same blue color on the inside. So you don't necessarily need to have the same on the inside and the outside all of the time. We do need to balance out what that finish is or just have it be finished, period. Otherwise, a wood product will warp. But I think it's important to let people know, too. It doesn't necessarily mean that you can't have sort of two different colors on the front and the back of the door, right? Yeah, absolutely. And I can sort of brighten up the door. We just did a door actually and the cuts were painted the exterior one color, the interior another color, the trim another color, and the dental shelf. So that's sort of an additional thing you can put on a wood or a fiberglass door where it, then they painted that another color. So definitely lots of colors going on, but you're 100% right that the exterior of the house is oftentimes a different feel to the interior. So a two-color door is a very popular choice. Yeah. Now, I think we've gotten through a lot here. So I'm hoping people will be able to keep up and we'll definitely have some pictures and some things in our show notes. But I think the last thing that I anyway had sort of in the front of my mind to talk about was hardware. Because hardware is like kind of like the jewelry of the door. And there are tons of options for that, whether it's, you know, with building code now, we have to have all have lever style, not knob style for all of our hardware. But, you know, all of the finishes, you can get any, like all kinds of finishes. And of course, a whole bunch of different shapes of handle as well, right? Yeah, absolutely. So with door hardware, there's a handful of sort of brands that are popular that people sort of are driven to. But there's probably another several dozen hardware brands that have little niches what they provide to the market. So if you're looking for a particular handle style or color, it's probably out there. But to hit on your point about knobs and levers, yes, with the building code, it is levers required. And we basically use sort of three brands, two brands mostly, but we do have three options. And they basically, the options there are color. So you're basically satin nickel, your blacks, your polished chrome, satin brass, polished brass sort of colors. And then you've got a square, a round rosette. And then you've got your different lever choices. So lots of different options there. And then the other thing, obviously, with hardware, like I said earlier in the video, is just to make sure that when you're ordering your hardware, if it's handed or not, just to understand which way the handing is, because that can be very, very important. Yeah, for sure. And we're not going to get into the nitty gritty of it all, but there's like the back set and the height. And if you're trying to match a new door and an old opening, all the hinge heights and everything really need to be dimensioned. And all that kind of stuff. When you go to get your door pre-machined even, or on-site machining, you want to make sure that all of that sort of stuff is accounted for. So there are a few other nuances when you're putting a new door in an old opening. And of course, anybody that you go to to order a door will help you to run through all those things. I don't know that we necessarily need to get into the nitty gritty of all of that, but there are going to be a few more little bits and pieces, especially when you're putting a new door in an old opening. I think one of the things for the exterior doors that I often get asked about is, you know, keypad entries and, you know, remote, you know, Wi-Fi in the sky kind of stuff. So maybe just touch, like, I see that as a big, well, I would say an emerging trend, but it's here. And more and more people are wanting that type of option. So maybe just talk a little bit about that. Yeah, so with the digital world that we live in today, everyone having cell phones and connected to the Internet, sort of anywhere they are. The times of having keys, physical keys is, we still live it today, but a lot of people are next level looking to have the door sort of unlock or open when they approach the home or just having the safety and security of knowing when they're away on a vacation or they're at work that their house is locked. So just sort of quickly go into that. You've got your typical keypad locks where you've got sort of the nine digits and you've got your four to six digit code. You type that in and it basically unlocks the door. But now, like you said, there are connected locks which have different August, Yale, Wiser. There's lots of different options out there that oftentimes will connect to a phone app with sensors on the door. And the cool part that I'll oftentimes suggest that people put one of these locks somewhere on their home because if you have an Amazon package coming or you have somebody coming in, a plumber or electrician to do some work, you have somebody coming to bring something to you. You've got kids. You can kind of not only track them with video cameras, for example, in the house, but now you can also let them in without oftentimes hiding a key under a lock or whatever people used to do. Go to the left and under the blue rock. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, awesome. I feel like we've kind of covered a lot here. Is there anything that you would want to share with people or that you often get asked when people come to the showroom? Yeah. So obviously, we've sort of dove into quite a bit of the door buying experience. But yes, there's definitely each application is very different. People's styles are very different. So we oftentimes, even though the web is an extremely valuable place, it can oftentimes be confusing and there can be things that may not work for your application. So we always suggest to give us a call and definitely book an appointment to come into the showroom and meet with one of our expert consultants. And we always ask that you bring photos and just some brief measurements, width by height measurements that we talked about with the rough opening. And that way we can sort of take your application and apply that to some different styles and options and really find what works best for your application. So, yeah, just give us a call when you're ready or if you have questions, and we're more than happy to answer them to the best of our ability. I've been to your showroom a number of times. You have a great setup where you have all these doors that you can slide out and you can really look at the different options and finishes and hardware and all that kind of stuff. So it's worth a visit over there. But also, when you do work with a door manufacturer, oftentimes you need someone to install it. So I know you guys also have installers that you work with and pair with people and they will go out as well and double check the dimensions and make sure that it's all good before you end up ordering a door that's incorrect. I mean, it just saves everybody a whole bunch of heartache in the end. So I think that's a good thing as well. And yeah, no, I definitely say if you're interested in getting a new door or a whole bunch of doors, be sure to head over to the showroom. So I'm going to ask you a couple of fun questions again today before we close out the show. But of course, maybe just whip off your website and your location on the North Shore there so that if people wanted to head out to the showroom, they know how to find you. Yeah, absolutely. So we are located at unit number 103-2433 Dollarton Highway, North Vancouver. So for those of you on the North Shore, Stong's Market or O'Tarrick's offices are just down the street from us. The one thing that is nice, it's kind of an odd thing, but the interchange over at the bridge has been repaired and it's starting to flow traffic quite nice. So if you're in West Van or you're in Burnaby, it's definitely a lot easier to get to us now. So that is nice, especially later in the day. I know that was always the dread to leave West Van anytime after 2 p.m. Oh, yeah. I always try to be off the North Shore by around 2 p.m. because after that, it's just a nightmare going out sort of to the east. Yeah, definitely. So what front door do you have on your home or what would you like to change it to? What would be your ideal? If you've already got your ideal, share with us what that is. And if you don't have your ideal front door, what would it be? Yeah, so I have a vertical green fir door with two side lights and a transom with a clear finish on it. And we have sort of leaded glass in the door. So I don't think I would change it. The nice part about wood over time is as it does age, it does something that we would call a patina. So it actually gives it some character and it sort of ages over time. And we just actually had it refinished. So that's the door I have in my home. And if people are looking for that natural beauty, there's definitely no way to beat it. I think you froze there. I've always been a fan of the idea of a door with a clear finish on it. And I think that's what we're going to do. I think you froze there. I will just close it. I'll just close it out. Oh, there you go. You're back. I'll just say again, it's been really great having you on the show. And for those listening and tuning in, be sure to follow, share and comment. And until then, be well. Thanks for coming on the show again today, Brayden. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me, Brandy. You bet. Ciao for now. Bye.