How to Replace Sliding Glass Doors
Like everything else, sliding doors are prone to warping, damage and even outright destruction. When replacing your sliding glass doors with normal doors isn’t an option, you have to learn how to replace them with new ones. Here’s how.
Materials
Sliding glass door replacements
Cordless power drill
Pry bar
Nail puller
Assorted driver bits
Hammer
Level
Paintbrush
Pneumatic nail gun
Handsaw
Caulk gun
Wood preservative
Flashing
Shims
Wood strips for spacers
Galvanized roofing nails
Procedure
Sliding glass doors rely on the fixed panel and the sliding panel. To start, you have to take off the doors from the fixed panel first. Do this by removing the brackets at the top and bottom using a drill bit.
Slide the doors off the center and lift the bottom part out of the door’s tracks.
Take off the sliding panel by removing the retaining strip and the interior door casing.
Tip the top portion of the door off the frame and take away.
Pull out the nails from the door frame’s exterior trim.
Take off the threshold and pull off the frame.
Review if the the threshold if there is a dry rot. If there is none, you may still want to replace it anyway. Tear everything out that is rotten or needs to be replaced.
Replace the threshold by taking the correct measurements and coating it with wood preservative. You may also want to cover your threshold with a tool called flashing, which would protect it from damage or warping due to the weather or other natural causes.
Get the replacement sliding glass doors. Make sure you have measured for the new ones in advance. Typically, they are smaller than the earlier-produced sliding glass doors, so you may need to use a spacer. A spacer is a way to make the upper opening lower to make sure it fits the sliding glass doors.
Use a nailing flange that can be bent out to fit a house’s door frame perfectly.
Bend the flange on the sides of the top and sides of the door frame. Lean against the assembly to apply the caulking.
Use the 3/8 of an inch of caulking to the center of the flange. Put another one in a rectangle shape an inch from the outside edge through the entire width and length of the threshold.
Tip the door up at the same time (ask some people to help you) and make sure that the replacement sliding glass doors are centered to their frame.
Hammer in a nail or two into the flange to hold the door frame in place.
Make sure that everything is aligned and in place, and then hammer the rest of the nails in the flange.
Replace the door casings.