installing french doors « Sweat Equity

Opening up the basement with french doors

January 20, 2009

Our basement had a single metal door leading to the patio. We attended a party where our hosts had installed french doors from their basement to their patio and we knew that was exactly what we wanted. Here’s the original door:

Original basement door

Based on the architectural requirements of our homeowner’s association, we needed to align this door with the one on the first floor that leads to the deck. To install the new door, here’s what needed to happen:

the switches to the right needed to be relocated
the pipes to the left of the door are overflow for the water heater pressure valve and water heater overflow pan. Both needed to move.
the structure needed to be reinforced.
optionally, since I needed to remove siding to make these changes I decided to replace the black sheathing with plywood. It’s probably not necessary, but I hate that stuff. It’s non-structural and I hate the idea of cutting corners to save a few bucks.

Moving the pipes was relatively straightforward. I turned the pipes into the next joist bay. The copper pipes were dry fit and then sweated together. The plastic pipe is CPVC which is slightly different than PVC and uses a different glue than PVC. CPVC has a higher rating for hot water, which is probably why it was used for the overflow. The electrical relocation was a little more involved because of the length of the wires and the continuation of the runs from this box to other junctions. I had to pull new wires for a number of the connections, including a run from the panel box to these switches.

I needed to install a new header to support the structure across the wider door (60 inches). Given the height of the door I had room for an 11 inch header. I wanted to provide as much support as possible so I ripped three 2×12’s to an 11 inch width. I sandwiched 1/2 inch plywood between the three 2x’s using construction adhesive and nails.

Before I removed the original header I built another wall for support using 2×6’s. I nailed one 2×6 to the floor joists and another to the floor and placed 2×6’s 16 inches on center to construct a wall. Once I had the wall in place I nailed a 2×6 on either side of the wall to help keep it from bending.

Once the support wall was in place I removed the door, header, and siding and cut back the sheathing. On each side of the header is one king stud and two jack studs. I put the header in place by myself and it was really heavy. A helper would have been helpful. The door was also really heavy. A good sized neighbor and I had all we could do to lift it into place. It took me a while to get it plumb and level. Both doors are operable and swing in. It lets in a lot of light and has come in really handy when we needed to move large objects into the house.